In ‘personal’ matchup, Washington State pulls away late for 73-59 win over Loyola Marymount

All season, after wins and losses alike, David Riley has pushed Nate Calmese on defense. As Washington State’s starting point guard, Calmese already provides consistent offense, driving into the lane and keeping defenses on their toes with a sufficient 3-pointer.

Riley figures Calmese can become the Cougars’ engine on both ends of the court if he can stay engaged on the defensive end and avoid the mental lapses he’s been prone to. He has the athleticism. He just needs the focus.

In WSU’s 73-59 (fixed from earlier) win over Loyola Marymount Monday night at the Arena, Calmese made his coach look like a genius. Midway through the second half, he supplied a pair of steals that helped the Cougs turn a slugfest into a scoring barrage and earn their third straight win — and sixth in seven tries.

Calmese, who totaled 20 points on the night, started the most important play by leaping out of bounds to save the ball to a teammate. He got the ball back, running past half court, and spotted wing LeJuan Watts angling toward the basket, pointing to the air. Calmese obliged and tossed a lob. Watts flushed it down. The 3,449 in attendance roared as the Cougars took a double-digit lead, which never dwindled to single digits the rest of the way.

“I’m just doing what my coaches ask me — play hard, pressure the ball, and defense leads to offense,” Calmese said. “That’s what we’re trying to do. That’s what we emphasized all week in practice. So just trying to let our defense lead to some offense, and I feel like that got us going. Got the crowd into it. That really helped us finish the game from there.”

From there, it was mostly smooth sailing for WSU (12-3, 2-0 WCC), which also got a career-high 17 points from freshman guard Tomas Thrastarson and 14 points from forward Dane Erikstrup. After a back-and-forth first half, the Cougars pulled away in the second half by producing more stops on defense, holding the Lions to just 25 points in the second half, including a 31% shooting outing from the floor and 1-for-12 from deep, plus 10 turnovers.

It was some of the best defense all season by the Cougs, who followed Watts’ dunk with a 10-0 run, which featured an and-one flush by forward Ethan Price, a free throw by Erikstrup, a triple by Thrastarson and a jumper by Calmese. That helped WSU vault ahead 59-44, putting this one out of reach, a Quad 3 victory for the Cougars.

Individually, though, the biggest story belonged to Thrastarson. In his best game in his true freshman season, Thrastarson knocked down 4 of 5 triples for 17 points, both his most in 12 games. With four rotation players out with injuries, including star wing Cedric Coward and sophomore guard Isaiah Watts, Thrastarson has filled a need, and he’s doing it nicely.

“I just felt the crowd behind me, and the guys got me open shots,” Thrastarson said. “It was all in rhythm. Yeah, just good shots.”

“It’s just really cool to see his confidence kinda blossom,” said Riley, whose team returns to action Saturday to host San Francisco, KenPom’s No. 59 team. “We’ve seen it all fall. He had days where he was the best player on the floor. And that’s when we had our whole team there all fall, and we walked out of multiple practices where Tomas is the best player on the floor.”

With a 6-foot-6 frame, the Iceland native takes advantage of his size on both sides of the floor. On offense, he can shoot over defenders, which he showed with a 6-for-8 shooting mark, which included an offensive rebound and tip-in.

To Riley, it said something about Thrastarson, who recorded a plus-14 in 29 minutes, the second-best mark on the team behind Erikstrup’s plus-20. Riley and his coaches know Thrastarson can hit 3s and use the occasional euro-step to free himself around the basket. It’s some of those effort plays that signal something more promising.

“He’s willing to get the dirty work done,” Riley said. “That was a huge play. They had scored a couple buckets, and he came in. Those momentum plays are what win games. That’s how you build momentum, and I thought he did that.”

The game didn’t end without a touch of drama. With 12 seconds left, Erikstrup scored on a layup, which Riley said he didn’t like. On the other end, with three seconds to go, LMU wing Jan Vide drove in for a layup, and Price responded with a hard foul. Vide took exception and got in the face of Price, who only smiled back, resulting in a technical for both players, as well as Erikstrup and LMU forward Jevon Porter.

Calmese also wound up fouling out of the game with two technical fouls, both of which came with a shade over two minutes to play. It wasn’t clear what Calmese did to earn the technicals, and Riley said he needed to review the film to form his opinion. Either way, he said, the Cougs need to “find that line and make sure we’re not stepping over it.”

On top of that, Calmese called this game “personal.” He described it that way because LMU chose not to practice on Sunday, while WSU did, which was after a win over Portland on Saturday evening.

“We practice pretty hard, and we heard that they didn’t want to practice,” Calmese said. “They didn’t do a shootaround today, just a walk-through, which we don’t (do) that in our program. So we took that personally. They thought we were sweet. They didn’t think we were good enough for them. So we took that to heart, and we wanted to go out there and beat them.”