Harmeling hit big 3-pointers

PULLMAN – On Thursday night, the Cougars cruised to a 20-point win over Arizona State. And yet Daven Harmeling couldn’t sleep.

“I was up until like 4, 4:30 in the morning,” the redshirt sophomore said. “I was just thinking, we can beat Arizona. We can do it. I know how good they are; I know how talented they are. But it just kept me up. We can do this. From then on I just felt really confident about the game. I knew that we could get them.”

Get them they did, and it was largely because of Harmeling himself, who finished with a career-high 28 points.

The Cougars went 5 of 8 from the field against Arizona’s man-to-man defense out of the gate, and Wildcats coach Lute Olson decided to play zone for much of the way thereafter.

In the first half that strategy worked, as WSU failed to shoot successfully from the outside. But then Harmeling heated up, and he propelled the Cougars to their biggest Pac-10 win in years.

“Harmeling just absolutely killed us and we went into the game indicating that he’s a 3-point shooter,” Olson said. “You’ve got to make him put the ball down and we did not. He has great range. We had some good pressure on a few of the shots, but his shooting was really, really critical to them.”

In the second half alone, Harmeling scored 20 points, including five 3-pointers. The 6-foot-7 forward found his open looks at the basket by negotiating the holes in Arizona’s zone, and as a result all five of those buckets from the outside came on catch-and-shoot looks.

The sophomore’s big night helped to offset one of the worst shooting performances of Derrick Low’s career, as the junior went 1 of 12 from the floor. But afterwards, Harmeling still gave Low credit.

“Even when he’s off teams are paying so much attention to him,” Harmeling said. “Out on the court, they’re saying, ‘There’s Low, there’s Low, there’s Low.’ You can play off of him.”