Another look at WSU’s win over Portland
COUGARS • UPDATED: 11:10 A.M.
Welcome to the first completely basketball-only blog post of the season. Written in SeaTac on Thanksgiving Eve – the most "perfect" flying day of the year. Actually the security line wasn't that bad, though us folks who fly a lot do have some advantages. Anyhow, back to the hoops. Washington State started fast, stalled early in the second half, and then pulled away late for an 84-68 win over a solid-if-not-spectacular University of Portland team. Read on for the details.
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• Washington State: We'll start with all the links, then move to some pre-boarding notes. ... We had our game story, the first real deadline writing we've done in a while – and it shows. ...The Times' Steve Kelley came to watch and filed this column. ... The paper also had a gamer. ... On the blog side, CougCenter had this report but technical difficulties kept the usual charts on the bench. ... And the WSU Football Blog, wondering why there was no turf on the floor, strayed into basketball territory with this post. ... The Oregonian, based in Portland, has this short on its website. ... I don't believe the Associated Press staffed the game. ... For our morning thoughts, we're going to focus on one area coach Ken Bone highlighted in his post-game comments last night. "There are times I think we look really good, especially on the perimeter," the second-year coach said. "But, inside, even though I think we did a pretty good job on (Luke) Sikma – he had six rebounds and was averaging almost 14 – we've just got to be better inside, have a better post presence on both ends of the court. Until we do that, until we can get that, I think we can be good, but to get to that next level, we need some better production out of our bigs." (The emphasis was mine.) Now this will probably be the subject of my advance for Saturday's Fresno State game, but let's delve into that here. Everyone who saw this coming, raise your right hand – boy it's hard to type with only my left hand. When last season ended, we wrote here the Cougars had to improve in the post to succeed. And, because we know it was no secret, probably so did you. I wrote then Brock Motum might just hold the key for WSU and the Australian lefty still does. He's bulked up, there's no denying it. But he's still learning the intricacies of playing post defense and has yet to have a breakout offensive game – though he stepped out to a hit a 3 and had one nice high-post drive for six points last night. Post play is all about pre-pass preparation, the ability to either deny the offensive player the position he wants or to take it from the defender. Watch DeAngelo Casto on the defensive end – and to a lesser degree Abe Lodwick. Watch how hard they work to move the bigs off the spot, to make them uncomfortable before an entry pass is made. Last night the guards did an excellent job of helping with that, using active hands and feet to pressure the entry passer most possessions. So in most cases the interior defense was solid, but not perfect, against a team that works hard to gain an advantage there. It's the other end that's a struggle. Casto has never been and probably never will be a dominant post scorer, especially if the post is congested as and after he catches the ball. And so far no other Cougar, except possibly Klay Thompson, have shown an inclination to be a presence at the block. Part of that is the Cougar offense – one pattern is called open for a reason. And part of that is Motum, Lodwick, Patrick Simon and others are more suited to the mid-range game. So that leaves Casto. He's a gem on the defensive end, but unless he becomes an even stronger threat on the other end, as Bone said, it will be hard to get to the next level. ... One final stat: The guys who played the 4 and 5 last night (Casto, Motum, Simon, Lodwick and Charlie Enquist) were 6 of 14 from the floor and finished with 17 points. They also combined for 13 rebounds.
• UPDATE: Made it to Los Angeles and have a long wait until I take a puddle skipper to Fresno. Looking forward to that. Anyhow, we have a link for you from Jim Moore, who was at the game last night and has his thoughts. ... As for football, it's so late in the day, not sure it's worth the effort to run down links, so we won't. ... FYI, I will be out of contact somewhat until Friday. Going to visit my sister in the Sierra foothills outside of Fresno for the holiday. I'm sure my AT&T cell won't work there - her's doesn't - but I'm hoping my Verizon card will. We'll see. If not, the WSU part of this blog will be quiet until before the game Friday. If it does work, we'll stay in touch.
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• That's it for now. If the plane to LA (then on to Fresno) has WiFi, I'll catch you up on the football news. If not, we'll get there sometime. Until later ...
