For No. 18 WSU, final Pac-12 matchup with UW means something extra — a chance to boost tournament stock

PULLMAN – Lost in Washington State’s win over rival Washington last month, a double-overtime affair packed to the gills with clutch shot-making, was the absence of one of the most important men on the Cougars’ bench.

Associate head coach Jim Shaw, the team’s defensive guru, was back home in Pullman for that one. Days prior, he had suffered a medical scare, exiting early from a WSU home game. As a precaution, he didn’t travel to Seattle, leaving the Cougs without one of their best in-game coaches, the man responsible for so many of the team’s improvements on defense this season.

The proof came in the numbers. Washington scored 87 points, nearly the most WSU has allowed all season, and the Cougs had no answer for the Huskies’ best players. Keion Brooks scored 35 points. Moses Wood added 18 and Sahvir Wheeler followed with 16.

“When he was out for the UW game, we got a little too worried about everything,” WSU coach Kyle Smith said of Shaw. “(It was) paralysis by analysis. He’s my human cheat code there.”

The good news for the Cougs is that Shaw hasn’t missed a game since. He will be back on the sideline for Washington State’s home matchup with Washington on Thursday night, the Cougars’ Senior Night game and their final home game in the Pac-12 as we know it.

Opportunity knocks for No. 18 Washington State (23-7, 14-5 Pac-12). The Cougars, a half-game back of Arizona for first place in the conference, get a chance to earn conference win No. 15, which would set a program record. They also want to send their seniors – Andrej Jakimovski, Isaac Jones, Jabe Mullins and Ben Olesen – out the right way.

If they get some help in the form of a loss from Arizona, which visits UCLA the same night, the Cougs might celebrate winning a share of the Pac-12 title, which hasn’t happened in Pullman since 1941.

There’s a lot on the line for the Cougs, not to mention seeding position for the NCAA Tournament, which they haven’t reached since 2008. They’re angling for a spot in Spokane, which is hosting four opening-round games, including those with No. 5 and No. 4 seeds. That’s about where the Cougs stand in current tournament projections.

An updated look around national seeding predictions for WSU, which is a lock for the tournament, is as follows:

ESPN, updated Tuesday: No. 5 seed, playing in Spokane

CBS, updated Wednesday: No. 6 seed, playing in Omaha, Nebraska

The Athletic, updated Friday: No. 6 seed, playing in Memphis, Tennessee

JBR Bracketology, updated Monday: No. 5 seed, playing in Spokane

It’s also possible that, with a win over UW on Thursday and a couple of victories at the Pac-12 Tournament next week in Las Vegas, WSU could play its way out of Spokane and onto the No. 3 seed line. That would likely plant the Cougs in Memphis or Omaha, which are hosting games between No. 3 and 14 seeds.

In the worst-case scenario for the Cougars – a loss to the Huskies on Thursday and a quarterfinal loss in the Pac-12 Tournament – they might drop to an No. 8, 9 or 10 seed, depending who that tournament loss comes to. Those NCAA Tournament games would happen in Omaha, Memphis or Salt Lake City.

Other sites include Pittsburgh, Brooklyn, New York, and Charlotte, North Carolina, but considering the geographic distance, it seems unlikely the tournament selection committee would send the Cougars to any of those places.

For WSU, the easiest way to play its way into Spokane starts with beating Washington on Thursday night.

“Their ability is probably better than our staff’s,” Smith said of his team’s ability to avoid looking too far ahead. “It’s hard. It’s hard for everyone. Just always the gossip and rumors and stuff like that. So they’ve been great, man. We stay on routine. I think that’s the biggest thing. Like, yesterday, we stayed in our routine, and I think we’re closer to fully healthy.”

Smith was referring to two Cougs, forward Isaac Jones and reserve guard Kymany Houinsou, the latter of whom was throwing up in the locker room after his team’s win over USC last Thursday. Two days later, he went scoreless in 16 minutes in a win over UCLA, while Jones registered 11 points and five rebounds, recovering from his own illness.

For WSU, getting Jones healthy is only one step toward activating him to capacity. In recent games, the Cougs have had trouble getting him the ball on the block. Opponents have sagged off the other WSU big man on the floor, either Rueben Chinyelu or Oscar Cluff, taking away their pass to Jones around the basket.

It’s a problem for Washington State because Jones, the team’s second-leading scorer, doesn’t pose much of a perimeter threat. He’s best with his back to the basket, catching it some 10 feet from the rim, but he struggles outside of that area. The Cougars must focus on how can they put Jones in better spots and get him the ball easier.

To Smith, part of the answer has to do with lineup construction. Sometimes, the Cougars need stops, in which case they might put Jones and Chinyelu on the court together, thereby taking away some of Jones’ opportunities on offense. In other cases, when they need buckets, they might go to a new small-ball lineup, which allows Jones to catch the ball much easier.

That lineup – Myles Rice, Isaiah Watts, Jaylen Wells, Jakimovski and Jones – was a plus-8 in WSU’s win over UCLA last weekend. Without anyone to sag off, defenses have to show Jones single coverage, which is the kind of defense he feasts on. It’s a key reason why he scored 20 points – on 10-for-15 shooting from the field – in the first Apple Cup game on Feb. 3.

The last Apple Cup game is now on the horizon, at least the last one as a Pac-12 affair. The basketball series is hazy, with WSU joining the West Coast Conference on a two-year basis and UW headed for the Big Ten next season. Whatever the game looks like in the future, Thursday’s installment is the next one, and for WSU, that makes it particularly important.

“I told you – the league’s coming back together in a few years. So I’m not that stressed about it,” Smith said Tuesday. “It’ll happen. Common sense will prevail. I’m gonna stick to the guns. … But being the last one, it’ll be unique.

“Everyone asks me like, ‘Is this really gratifying, that it’s your last one?’ I said, ‘We haven’t talked about it, haven’t worried about it.’ Because I do think basketball is unique in the sense you can be in the West Coast Conference, or whatever, and be a Final Four, national championship type team.”