Last laugh is his

PULLMAN – Maybe it’s easier to laugh when you’re team is 16-3, but Daven Harmeling has donned a target on his back far longer than the Cougars have been winning games.

“There’s a whole lot of stuff,” he nodded.

Pick a joke, and Harmeling has likely been on the receiving end of it. Mistakes on the floor? Teammates still make fun of him for a missed assignment late in a three-point loss at Oregon – from two years ago. Dental work? Three root canals, and the mouthpiece he has to wear now, after getting an elbow in practice this season have set up more than just the occasional zinger. But the worst? That was introduced by former coach Dick Bennett.

“Freshman year, some of the stuff that Dick said to me,” Harmeling recalled, breaking into his best impression of the elder Bennett coach. ” ‘Harmeling! My grandmother runs faster than you! … Daven, you, you’re a D-III player. But at least you play hard like a Division I player.’ “

Said teammate Derrick Low: “We were dying inside. We had to wait until practice was over to explode. … That’s going to be around for a long time.”

Fortunately for Harmeling, those jokes seem to come as naturally from his lips as they do from everybody else’s. After missing all but a sliver of the season’s first game last year because of a shoulder injury, Harmeling has returned this season with a self-deprecating sense of humor and an uncannily accurate jump shot.

Both, it seems, have had a tremendous effect in lifting these Cougars to the heights they’ve reached already, with a chance to lock up a winning season and move one step closer to the postseason as they host Oregon State at 7 tonight in Beasley Coliseum.

“There’s something about humor that just brings guys together,” Harmeling said. “Our chemistry, some guys wouldn’t necessarily be best friends but we’re all joking around and laughing together.”

Time and time again, it has been Harmeling who has lifted the Cougars in the biggest of spots.

He scored 20 against Gonzaga in Washington State’s first big victory of the season, and then backed it up with 28 against Arizona in yet another huge win. Even in defeat against Stanford, it was a pair of his 3-pointers late in the game that allowed WSU to erase a nine-point deficit and send the game to overtime.

And, like so many of his teammates, it would have seemed unimaginable not that long ago that this particular player would become so important on a team ranked 20th in the nation.

Even after his junior year of high school, Harmeling didn’t have any aspirations beyond playing Division II in college. But a solid performance at an individual camp at nearby Colorado State earned him an offer to walk on there, and more important a suggestion from an AAU coach to try playing in some tournaments.

That he did, and it was at one outside of Dallas, where WSU’s Mike Heidemann discovered the 6-foot-7 forward.

“A lot of our kids, not a lot of people are after,” said Heidemann, recalling that he had never heard of Harmeling beforehand. “I just thought he was a pretty complete player and we like guys who can do more than one thing. He played a little defense. You knew he wasn’t a great athlete, but that didn’t scare us.”

That assessment, three years later, is looking prescient. Harmeling is the first to admit – again, here’s that sense of humor – that he’s not a star player. But within the WSU game plan, he’s found a niche, one desperately needed at times.

“I probably couldn’t have even told you that Washington State was in the Pac-10 when I was a junior in high school,” he said. “I was a no-name nobody. I still was when I came here.

“I feel like there’s no other ranked team in the country I could start for. The system we play is just ideal for my game. … I’m not a great 1-on-1 defender. Our defense is predicated on giving help. It’s just little things like that, the ability to screen and pop and hit jumpers.”

By doing so, and by keeping a mouthpiece-laden smile on the whole time, Harmeling has become a team leader and go-to guy in the clutch even though he’s only a redshirt sophomore.

“Everyone respects Daven,” Low said. “He gets us pumped up.”

As the retired coach might note, that’s not too shabby for a Division III player.