Lamar Washington hits winner in overtime to lift Pacific over WSU 95-94, ending Cougars’ four-game win streak

PULLMAN – Nate Calmese fell to the floor as the ball sailed toward the basket, the Beasley Coliseum crowd going quiet as the potential game-winner over Pacific hurtled toward the rim. It angled toward the iron, a tight backspin charting its path, where it caught too much of the back. It flew off the rim and back to the court, where WSU and Pacific would do overtime.

Still, it added up to a giant swing of momentum for WSU, which trailed by as many as 12 in Thursday’s first half. The Cougs faced a six-point deficit with a little less than five minutes to go, a four-point hole with 90 seconds to play. They would certainly take overtime.

WSU went home with something worse, a 96-95 loss to Pacific, the first loss in five games for the Cougars, who lost at the buzzer when guard Lamar Washington sank the game-winner. Washington totaled a career-high 40 points, more than his past three games combined, springing open in the corner as the buzzer sounded.

Washington had the opportunity in large part because WSU made just 8 of 12 free throws in overtime, including a costly 2-for-6 stretch to end the game. It featured an 0-for-2 trip from freshman guard Tomas Thrastarson and a 1-for-2 effort from Calmese, who went to the line just before Washington’s game-winner. With two makes, he could have shut the door. With only one, though, he left it propped open for the Tigers, who improved to 6-13 and 1-4, entering at No. 310 in the NET rankings.

That makes this a Quad 4 loss for the Cougs (13-4, 3-1 WCC), whose NCAA Tournament resume has taken a serious blow. They can certainly improve their resume with wins coming up – they could also win the WCC Tournament and earn an automatic bid – but now they have an uphill climb to make a second straight dance with an at-large bid.

It might not be a season-ender for WSU, but it deals a massive blow to the Cougs’ NCAA Tournament chances. Only three of the top 62 teams in the NET rankings have a Quad 4 loss on their ledger. None of the top 53 do. It’s a black mark, and it could very easily sway committee members to keep the Cougs out of the field on Selection Sunday. But they do have a few opportunities to make up for it.

The Cougs have two Quad 1 games against Gonzaga left on the regular-season schedule. Their only other contest that would be Quad 1 with Thursday’s rankings: A road test vs. Santa Clara on Jan. 23.

With this setback to Pacific, which had lost 24 straight road games and 20 straight WCC contests, WSU drops from 74 to 82 in the KenPom rankings. The NET rankings, which had the Cougars at No. 68 entering Thursday’s game, will refresh on Friday morning.

More to the point: Across the last 20 seasons, only one team with a similar resume to Washington State’s current one has made the NCAA Tournament via at-large bid, according to Bart Torvik data. That was Pittsburgh in 2023.

“I thought it was a heck of a college basketball game. We gotta come out the gates better,” WSU coach David Riley said. “I thought that first half, we didn’t didn’t honor the game. We didn’t play with the toughness we needed to go win a Division I game, and that put us in a hole. They made some big plays down the stretch.”

For the game, the Cougs connected on 27 of 36 from the free-throw line, including a 16-for-16 effort in the second half, only to unravel with a final 2-for-6 display in the final moments. Moments after Thrastarson missed a pair, Watts went to the line, where he also missed one. That led to Calmese’s 1-for-2 outing.

WSU, which sent the game to overtime with a tip jam from wing LeJuan Watts in the final seconds of regulation, also got a career-high 28 points from forward Ethan Price. Four other Cougs scored in double figures: 16 from Watts, 14 from Calmese, 12 from Dane Erikstrup and 11 from Thrastarson.

But Calmese needed 18 shots to score his points, and because of cramps, Price missed the entirety of the five-minute overtime. That took one of the Cougs’ best defenders off the floor for the most important stretch of the game. Citing size reasons, Riley also replaced Calmese with reserve guard Parker Gerrits for the final play of the game, Washington’s game-winner.

Ahead of this weekend’s showdown with No. 18 Gonzaga, the Cougs dropped to second place in the WCC, losing a healthy dose of momentum. That game would have been for first place in the conference. Instead, it becomes nearly a must-win for WSU and its chances to make the NCAA Touranment with an at-large bid.

“I think we have fight. I think our guys have resiliency,” Riley said. “I think that’s that’s something that I’ve never questioned with our guys. Just kinda let our foot off the gas down the last minute.”

It’s the first WCC loss for Riley, who said his team struggled to execute its defensive gameplan against Washington, who scored 16 of his points in the first half. That allowed him to get in rhythm early on, Price and Watts agreed, which allowed him to keep things rolling with 17 in the second half and seven in overtime.

More importantly, it’s the second straight time the Cougs allowed an opposing player to torch them. Five days after San Francisco guard Malik Thomas singed the Cougs for 34 points, Washington followed with a 40-ball. WSU limited Thomas to seven-second half points by sending two defenders at him. The Cougs didn’t do much of that against Washington, but that was part of their plan.

“We had some times where we were supposed to, and we were a little bit late,” Riley said. “And and he’s such a quick player. If you go slow, if you tiptoe into those double teams, or different ways that we were trying to put two on the ball, he’s too fast for it to look like you’re even doing it. We were slow in our rotations. We weren’t tight. I did a really bad job of preparing our team in that in that regard.”

Instead, Washington burned WSU defenders in single coverage, getting to his spots in the mid-range and bottoming 4 of 6 from beyond the arc. Washington often used ball screens to get switches onto WSU big men like Price and Erikstrup, which is when he would leverage his quickness to rise up into his shots.

That’s where the Cougs could have made changes, could have committed more defenders to Washington, especially off ball screens. That’s how they shut Thomas off last weekend. A lack of defensive execution prevented them from doing the same to Washington.

“He kept us off balance,” Riley said. “He was redirecting, rejecting some screens, and we weren’t disciplined, and keeping them into the ball screen. Our bigs were a little bit late. It was really, honestly, a different guy, different situation, being one step slow, whether it was on the ball being a step slow on reject screens, whether it was a big being a step slow and not getting up to the level.

“Or it could have been the rotation guy. The beginning of the second half, we put two on the ball. They throw it for a dunk for the big guy, because we don’t have our rotations right. It just seemed like every step of the way, there was something that we were just dragging our feet on.”