Another great individual athlete. Another lackluster supporting cast. Another record, leading to another footnote on the pages of volumes featuring much greater exploits.

Another chapter of Washington State University athletics.

This is the plight of many a Cougar standout, and Josh Hawkinson is no exception.

The junior forward out of Shorewood High School has never really tasted any form of team-wide success during his Cougar career.

Barring a nearly impossible turnaround this year, none of his three teams to this point will make it to the .500 mark by season’s end, and none of them will receive an invitation to a postseason tournament.

Yet even in the face of defeat, Hawkinson has put together one of the most impressive seasons by a Cougar big man in the school’s history, and has become one of the most dominant posts in the Pac-12.

He leads the conference with 17 double-doubles and is tied for sixth in the nation in that stat with Ben Simmons, Louisiana State’s freshman player-of-the-year candidate – a ranking keyed by his WSU-record 11-straight double-doubles.

But when your team is on an 11-game losing streak, and has won just one conference game in 13 outings, celebrating individual success is almost impossible.

“It’s hard to look at individual stats when your team isn’t doing well, especially when you’re a team captain and you feel like you have the burden and the responsibility of helping lead your team,” Hawkinson said. “When you only have one win, it’s hard to look at yourself and the season that you’re having and really be proud of that.”

With seven players donning crimson and gray for the first time this season, Hawkinson’s role as a team captain has been more to command the locker room and keep his teammates positive, even though they are experiencing crushing defeats week-in and week-out.

“As a leader you always have to keep a straight face and you can’t be the one that shows you’re down, shows you’re sad or angry or upset,” Hawkinson said. “If they see their leader is doing those things, it rubs off on them.”

Ben Scheffler, who coached Hawkinson in AAU ball and during his senior season at Shorewood, said that like most big and lanky basketball players, Hawkinson was fairly shy around his teammates, and at an early age had to let his work ethic and dedication speak for him.

“He always chose to lead by example, which I think shows one key component of being a leader,” Scheffler said. “Secondly, as he did in high school, or even with his AAU team, he became more and more competitive to assert himself with his peers. And I think it’s just been a natural progression for him once he got to Wazzu and started to establish himself as a player.”

With the 6-foot-10, 245-pound post dropping more than 15 points and 11 rebounds every night, it might be tough for Cougar fans to remember back to a freshman Hawkinson who sported 15-20 extra pounds of “baby fat” and averaged 1.2 points and 1.6 rebounds in six minutes of work per game.

That Josh Hawkinson was quickly replaced when Head Coach Ernie Kent was hired after Hawkinson’s freshman season. On what Hawkinson described as “pretty much Day 1” of Kent’s tenure, the coach called the then-sophomore forward into his office for a one-on-one meeting, and asked him what he thought his role as a Cougar was.

“(Coach Kent) asked me what I wanted to be, and I basically said a rebounder and a role player that sets screens,” Hawkinson said. “And he said, ‘No, you need to be a shooter and a leader for this program and this team.’ And I didn’t really believe him at first, you know? But he kept believing in me.”

Like most other folks in the college basketball world would admit – Hawkinson included – Kent said the consistency Hawkinson showed in the past two seasons and the overall dominance he has had over other Pac-12 big men was unforeseeable. He did, however, spot the potential in Hawkinson to be a future leader of his Cougar team.

“What I could see was his skill set, and his ability and his love for the game and his passion for the game, and his ability to score,” Kent said. “And it just felt like you had the perfect system, the way you coached, offensively and all those things, that would fit his skill set, and that’s the thing that has really helped. Everything else he has brought to the table, and that I did not see.”

As impressive as his sophomore season was, averaging 14.7 points and 10.8 rebounds, his numbers across the board have improved in his current campaign.

For the most part his defense – identified by both Kent and Scheffler as the weakest part of his game – has improved, and his 3-point shooting percentage has more than doubled, a goal Kent set for him at the beginning of the season.

In true Josh Hawkinson fashion, if you ask him what he hopes to accomplish in the last month or so of the season, he starts to strategize how the team can get on a roll in its last five conference games and win out in the conference tournament to make it to the big dance.

His optimism, with the team on its longest losing streak in 13 years, is endearing, inspiring and heartbreaking, all at the same time.

“I think if we can win a couple games out of these next ones coming up, and then we get it going for the Pac-12 tournament, anything can happen in there,” Hawkinson said.

So fans will watch and root for their Cougs as they have all season, as Hawkinson continues to tear up opposing Pac-12 frontcourts. With redshirt junior center Valentine Izundu getting back up to game speed and junior guard Que Johnson emerging as an offensive threat last week against Colorado and Utah, perhaps the Cougs can find the third scorer they’ve been looking for and win a few games down the stretch, maybe even in the Pac-12 tournament.

But if the program continues on its current trajectory, Hawkinson’s name will just be another in a long line of great Cougars on subpar teams.