Poor shooting dooms No. 18 WSU in 74-68 loss to UW, ending regular season on sour note

PULLMAN — Whenever No. 18 Washington State finds a way to flush this latest loss, a 74-68 home setback to rival Washington in Thursday’s regular-season finale, the first place the Cougars might go to practice is the free throw line.

That’s where, with the game in the balance in crunch time, the hosts missed three straight. Forward Isaac Jones, who totaled 20 points, misfired on two with a chance to trim his group’s deficit to three. Moments later, guard Myles Rice clanged one with an opportunity to draw within two. On a poor shooting night, WSU converted on 8 of 17 from the stripe and 4 of 23 from deep, heading into next week’s Pac-12 Tournament with a loss in its final conference home game as we know it.

“Not gonna win many games shooting 39, (17) and 47, bottom line,” WSU coach Kyle Smith said, referring to his team’s percentages from the field, 3-point line and free-throw line. “We got a week to get better, and hopefully we’ll learn. We’ve been pulling a couple out of the fire — USC, down 10 second half, down 10 against Stanford and came back and got it. UCLA, down 12 to start the game. That’s hard.”

With this result, WSU (23-8, 14-6 Pac-12) is a lock for the No. 2 seed in the Pac-12 Tournament, playing the winner of the 5 vs. 12 game on March 14 at T-Mobile Arena. Those seeds have yet to be determined.

This one came down to the wire — Rice’s one free throw helped WSU draw within four with 1:39 left — but the game changed a few minutes prior. The Cougs were up 53-52 when Jones got two shots right at the rim, a layup and a dunk, both of which rimmed out. UW responded with 9 straight points, seizing a 61-53 lead with a shade under 5 minutes to play.

The Cougs were already struggling on offense. They stood nearly no chance after that run.

“They made the big plays that got them the win,” Smith said.

It was just the second home loss all season for the Cougs, who had to scrap their plans for a court-storming, suffering a Quad 2 defeat to a UW team that shot 51% from the field. Before 9,311 fans, the largest on-campus basketball crowd in the state this season, WSU displayed a shooting performance largely unheard of for this group.

The numbers bear it out. Wing Jaylen Wells, who entered shooting a blistering 47% from deep in conference play, made just 1 of 10 triples. Rice managed 8 points, including two with the game out of reach, shooting 2-for-9 from the floor. Senior wing Andrej Jakimovski pushed through his shoulder injury to record a 2-point showing, hitting just 1 of 8 shots, including an 0-for-4 effort from beyond the arc.

“I don’t want to make excuses or anything,” Jakimovski said, “but I couldn’t lift my arm.”

With those outings, WSU combined for these numbers from three of its most potent offensive players: 19 points on 6-for-30 shooting, including 1-for-16 from beyond the arc.

If nothing else, it was an uncharacteristically bad shooting performance from WSU, which endured its fourth straight slow start, falling behind by seven in the first few minutes. The hosts overcame that and more — in the first half, the Cougars took a lead as wide as 10, fueled by freshman guard Isaiah Watts, who scored 15 points on three long balls — but their shot-making abandoned them at the worst time.

Washington State’s slow starts can no longer go swept under the rug. Going back two weeks, WSU fell behind 8-6 to Arizona State, 10-4 to USC and 19-6 to UCLA. On Thursday, the Cougs went down 11-4 to UW, missed shots and poor shot selection coloring yet another lackluster beginning.

“It was at least 6-4 at the first media (timeout). I was kinda excited about that — we were only down two,” Smith said. “But we took some terrible shots. We talked about it, but sometimes you get in that funk. We might have to mix things up or try to find a way to (turn it around).”

Several Cougs are in major funks at the moment, which is the kind of trend that flies under the radar in wins. Across his past four games, Wells has made 7 of 27 triples, just 26%. Jones has sunk 7 of his last 18 free throws, only 39%. Rice hasn’t made a long ball since WSU’s win over Stanford on Feb. 17, going 0-for-12 since then, and Jakimovski has hit 6 of his last 28 tries from distance, which is 21%.

WSU has been able to win those games by connecting on the shots that matter most, like Wells’ triple to bury USC and the 8-0 run WSU used to down UCLA last weekend. The Cougs missed those kinds of shots on Thursday night. It cost them in a meaningful way, likely forcing them to win a couple games at the Pac-12 Tournament to earn a good enough NCAA Tournament seed to land at the Spokane site.

“We need to start better,” said Jakimovski, whose group lost 12 turnovers for 14 points. “We didn’t play good. We took bad shots. We were impatient on offense. The only thing we did today is rebounding, and that’s it. We didn’t make free throws, we took bad possessions, bad shots. Didn’t take care of the ball.”

“I think more of our bad shot selection was more like transition, or one pass and shot,” Smith said. “I think when we put the ball inside, good things happened for us.”

On defense, Washington State permitted 23 points to Koren Johnson and 22 to Keion Brooks, who combined for 4 triples. The biggest one came from Johnson, who nailed one from the corner to hand UW a seven-point lead with around 90 seconds to play.

For the Cougars, the bigger problems came on offense, where they will have to improve next week in Las Vegas. They will get nearly a week off before their next game. They will hope rest is the antidote to the shooting woes that plagued them on Thursday night, Beasley Coliseum’s final time hosting a Pac-12 game as currently constructed.