Washington State women entering new WCC world with deep roster, high expectations

LAS VEGAS – It’s true, Kamie Ethridge acknowledged, the Washington State women will have to adjust to a new set of rosters, coaches, playing styles and road venues as a result of their move to the West Coast Conference.

Another way of viewing it? An entirely new conference will have to adjust to the Cougars, who, along with Oregon State, bring an accomplished coach, winning pedigree and talented roster to the WCC, posting a 63-37 record over the past three seasons under Ethridge.

“I think you have to do it every year anyway,” Ethridge said Wednesday at WCC Media Day at Resorts World in Las Vegas. “Systems may stay the same and things like that, but it is a little bit more of a challenge. … That’s the beauty of the 11-game nonconference. You have a lot of time to study people and see what they like to do and when they’re effective.

“Same with us, people have to do the same with us. So it’s going to be a challenge both ways.”

At the moment, the challenge facing a WSU team picked to finish second in the WCC – the Cougars received 91 points, just one shy of first-place Gonzaga – is finding a way to replace two program cornerstones in forward Bella Murekatete and, to a greater extent, high-scoring guard Charlisse Leger-Walker.

The Cougars got somewhat of a head start on doing that during the final month of the 2023-24 season when Leger-Walker, who’s now at UCLA, suffered an ACL injury on Jan. 28.

The guard’s departure means WSU will lose some of its firepower on the offensive end, but Ethridge believes her team still has talent in spades, a level of depth that it’s lacked in the past and more versatility on defense that should allow the Cougars to install new concepts on that side of the floor.

“I think not having some big voices, the grittiness and the toughness and the leadership and the resiliency of some of those players and the consistency, but I love this team,” Ethridge said. “I think we’re more talented than we’ve ever been. I think we’re deeper than we’ve ever been. I think we can play more different styles on the defensive end than we ever had. So there’s some real positives about it.”

The Cougars may not have always had the interior advantage routinely playing against bigger, more talented teams in the Pac-12 Conference, but size should be an asset this season, giving them a chance to defend in the post at a higher level and gain an edge on the glass.

“Sizewise we’re a lot better this year, so I think that will help a lot – especially in the West Coast Conference, we’ll be able to be one of the biggest teams,” junior guard Astera Tuhina said. “I think that’ll help us on the defensive end. In the past we haven’t always been great at rebounding and maybe now we can step up and do a better job of that.”

Forward Tara Wallack is the only senior on one of Ethridge’s younger teams at WSU, the only returner who started in all 36 games for the Cougars a year ago and the only player who started on the school’s Pac-12 championship team in 2022-23.

Of returning to the NCAA Tournament, Wallack said, “That’s the main goal at the end of the day and I know for myself it’s my last year, so I want to make everything count and I want to go back to March Madness.”

The makeup of WSU’s roster includes six freshmen, three sophomores and only four upperclassmen. Under Ethridge, the Cougars have leaned on a more unorthodox method – unorthodox in the current college athletics climate, at least – to rebuild their roster, mostly electing to recruit promising high school players rather than leaning on the NCAA transfer portal.

“We have no success in the portal,” Ethridge said. “We just have zero success. Other than Beyonce Bea last year, who came from Idaho, 7 miles away. … We’re just not the place people want to go if they’re leaving someplace else and it’s not really us anyway.

“We want to take high school kids, we want to grow them, we want to develop them. We want them to know they can’t get any better coaching, experience than at Washington State, and we’ve got to make sure they stay with us for four years.”