‘We lost some competitive fire’: WSU coach David Riley reflects on recent skid ahead of Cougars’ final home game

PULLMAN – Cedric Coward spotted his opportunity and came running over .

The Washington State wing remains out for the season with a shoulder injury, so when Coward saw coach David Riley speaking to the media before Wednesday’s practice, he had to razz him.

Coward walked up beside Riley and, with a wide grin on his face, blew him a kiss. Riley laughed. Then, just as quickly as he had run over, Coward sprinted back to the Beasley Coliseum court.

By all accounts, Coward has remained a constant presence around the struggling Cougars’ program, testing young players’ concentration during pregame ball-handling drills and congratulating his guys after huge plays, such as forward Ethan Price’s game-saving block to beat Pepperdine on Feb. 8.

WSU may be missing Coward on the court, but he’s doing his best to give back off it.

But as Washington State (16-13, 6-10) prepares to host San Diego (4-25, 1-15) on Thursday night, the first of the Cougars’ two final regular-season games before the WCC Tournament kicks off next week in Las Vegas, Coward’s inability to practice – much less play – has figured prominently in the team’s seven-week skid.

Throw in several other injuries, like guard Isaiah Watts’ 10-game absence, Ri Vavers’ off-and-on availability and freshman guard Marcus Wilson’s season-ending injury, and it becomes clear WSU’s tumble has started during practices.

“When you kind of look at our losses these last few weeks, a lot of it’s come down to us not having the competitive edge for 40 minutes,” Riley said. “There’s been some times we haven’t looked connected as a team offensively and haven’t played the unselfish style of play that we wanted to play.

“When those go down the tubes, you gotta look back at your practices and what happened to get to that point. And I think we lost some competitive fire in our practices. We just lost value in the playing together part. So I think that’s something that we gotta really focus on and get back in our culture.”

Riley said some of that trend traces back to the Cougars’ injury bad luck. In the worst stretches – when Coward, Watts, Vavers, Wilson and freshman guard Kase Wynott’s absences all coalesced – WSU only had eight healthy bodies for practices. That included one freshman taking a redshirt year, center Dimitrije Vukicevic, and one walk-on, guard Tayon Sessoms.

Down five players, Riley knew he couldn’t afford another injury, so the Cougars began “tippy-toeing through practice,” he said. That took some competitiveness out of practice, Riley said, and the group “stopped really getting after it in practice.”

“It’s hard. Everyone’s a little bit nervous,” Riley said. “I should have found different ways to keep that edge going. I just look back at my past teams, and with any good team, there’s some confrontation in practice, there’s some uncomfortableness. You want to take your losses during practice and make sure you’re winning the games. And I think we kind of got away from that.”

Going back to his days as an Eastern Washington graduate assistant, Riley has fashioned himself an offensive guru, at times drawing up plays and at others letting his guys read and react. It’s a big part of how the Cougs raced to a 13-3 start to the year, starting 3-0 in the WCC by using their free-flowing offense to rack up points.

So in practice, when the Cougars were at their most shorthanded, they leaned too hard on the Xs and Os. At least that’s the way Riley sees it in hindsight.

“I think we learned a lot,” Riley said. “There was still a bunch of tactical stuff that we had to get better at, but it was probably a little bit too focused on that. Probably could have found some 2-on-2, some 3-on-3, different ways that we could have played and really found a way to toe that line.

“That’s what it is. You want to be tactical, you want to think the game. But you also gotta have that fight that it takes to go win. You gotta take these wins, whether it’s home, on the road, you gotta take it to these teams. And I think we didn’t find that balance well enough.”

WSU bore the results on the court. The two biggest blotches on the Cougars’ resume are losses to struggling Pacific. At the time of the second setback, a 70-68 road loss on Jan. 30, the Tigers had two conference wins – both over the Cougars. It was their first home win over a conference opponent in two seasons.

In something of a twist, WSU’s resume might not look so bad without those two losses. Seven of the Cougars’ 13 losses have been of the Quad 1 variety, with four more Quad 2 losses sprinkled in, but one Quad 4 loss can sink a season. Two will derail it entirely. The latter has caused the Cougars’ first season under Riley to crater.

In any case, WSU will honor three seniors before Thursday’s game: forwards Dane Erikstrup and Ethan Price, plus Coward, though his future is a bit more uncertain. Because he only played six games before going down with a shoulder injury, he can likely secure a medical redshirt, which would grant him another year of eligibility.

But Coward is on NBA scouts’ radars, so much so that he tested the pro waters last spring before opting to transfer to WSU. In six games in a Cougars uniform, he scored in double figures four times, including 30 points in a blowout win over Northern Colorado.

Riley makes no bones about the reality: NBA teams are in on Coward, who will all but certainly test his stock after the season, when he’s cleared to return to action. On Tuesday, Riley offered no firm update on Coward’s status, only saying Coward will “see where he falls in the draft order and kind of go from there.”

In hosting San Diego , which has lost 15 consecutive games and 21 of its past 22, the Cougars will try to give Price and Erikstrup a proper sendoff.

Price was Riley’s first recruit at Eastern Washington. Erikstrup began his career with one season at Division II Cal Poly Pomona before spending the next two at EWU, where he helped the Eagles capture back-to-back regular-season Big Sky crowns.

It gave Riley a chance to reflect on his experience coaching Erikstrup, the 6-foot-11 forward whose size belies his ability, a stretch big whose shooting has often unlocked his team’s offense.

“He’s one of those guys that, especially his first year,” Riley said, “he walks in a gym, you don’t really look the part. He’s just a confident, smart, really high-achieving person that has done a great job of improving his body, improving his skill set. Had a pretty cool trajectory to go, year one, limited minutes. Year two, really, really good sixth man, and then, this year to be finishing off a senior year like this is pretty impressive.”