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Sunday afternoon WSU women's hoops (14-7,6-4 Pac-12) traveled to Salt Lake City to take on the Utah Utes (13-7,4-4 Pac-12) for a game that was important for the post-season hopes of both teams. Wazzu put themselves stymied behind the eight-ball through three quarters trailing the Utes by 19-points with just ten minutes of play remaining. Even for Cougar Nation, remotes were busy everywhere changing to either another game or to watch guys play golf at Pebble Beach. Those who stayed on board were treated to a gritty 12-2 run by the Cougs to open the final quarter. Once the Utah lead was whittled down to single digits, pulling out a win seemed possible. After a couple of buckets by the home squad, Wazzu pulled within five points at 65-60 with 2:29 remaining. Game on. The short rotation of players by Coach Kamie Ethridge reared its ugly head down the stretch. Sophomore sharp-shooter Charlisse Leger-Walker missed a pair of free throws with less than two minutes to play. Unfortunately, that took the wind out of the sails of WSU. Utah held on the earn the victory by a final of 72-66. The 27-point fourth quarter just wasn't enough this time around.
Coach Ethridge had this to say after the final buzzer sounded:
"I think that's a really good Utah team. They are hard to scout in one day. We made some mistakes in the first half. We had a bad offensive mindset and execution in the second quarter. People don't believe you can win or lose a game (that early), but we never got a handle on being a better basketball team until the fourth quarter. I'm proud of how the team competed and came back. Give a lot of credit to Utah, they are really good and hard to guard. We just weren't up to the task today, but we can learn a lot from this game."
Washington State returns to Pullman this Wednesday, February 9, to kick-off a five-game homestand to close out the 2021-22 slate of home games at Beasley Coliseum. The Cougars will take on No. 19/22 Oregon for a Wednesday matinee. Tip-off against the Ducks is set for 12 p.m. PT and will air live on the Pac-12 Network.
https://wsucougars.com/news/2022/2/6/womens-basketball-cougs-can-t-complete-comeback-at-utah.aspx -
For the third time in his young career, Washington State Men's Basketball freshman Mouhamed Gueye was named the Pac-12 Freshman of the Week, earning the award for the week ending February 16. While Gueye has taken the award three times, the latest honor marks the second time for the big forward in Pac-12 play after also taking home the top freshman award three weeks prior on Jan. 16. He becomes the second newcomer to earn three Freshman of the Week awards in the conference trailing Stanford's Harrison Ingram who has earned a league-best five weekly awards on the year.
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For those interested, Colton Clark of the Spokesman/Review put together a nice piece on the two Cougs who participated in the Senior Bowl. Here's the link:
https://www.khq.com/sports/washington_state_university/washington-state-products-jaylen-watson-abraham-lucas-earn-kudos-during-senior-bowl-week/article_6edaaff0-e559-5875-912d-882dbd87fa8f.html
Go Cougs!!!
- It seems fitting to put together a list of coaches who branch off of the Mike Leach coaching tree. Perspective on his football genius can easily be determined by a cursory glance:
Dave Aranda/Baylor head coach – Graduate assistant coach under Leach from 2000-02 at Texas Tech
Neal Brown/West Virginia head coach – Played under Leach in 1998 when Leach was offensive coordinator at Kentucky
Sonny Cumbie/Louisiana Tech head coach – Played under Leach at Texas Tech from 2000-03 and later served as a graduate assistant coach under Leach
Sonny Dykes/TCU head coach – Coached wide receivers and later was the co-offensive coordinator at Texas Tech under Leach from 2000-06
Josh Heupel/Tennessee head coach – Played under Leach at Oklahoma in 1999 when Leach was the offensive coordinator for the Sooners
Dana Holgorsen/Houston head coach – Coached alongside Leach as assistants at Valdosta State from 1993-95, then served as a wide receivers coach and offensive coordinator under Leach from ...
- The news of former WSU Coach Mike Leach passing at the young age of 61 is very, very sad. I had the pleasure of writing about the Cougs when Leach was at the helm. To say that he was a unique person doesn't begin to describe the multi-faceted dimension of the man.
In terms of coaching football, Leach led his teams in a way that had most other coaches scratching their heads. His offensive creativity gave a multitude of defensive coordinators ulcers. To say that his techniques for molding student-athletes into football players were unusual would be accurate. Making guys run sprints in a sand pit named "Leach Beach" is a prime example. Crazy as that sounds, his players had fewer ankle injuries over the course of the season than any team in football. Only Mike Leach could get players to hit the beach. And if you look at the coaching tree that branches out from Leach, you'd find a myriad of men who owe him for their start in the profession.
When you examine the way Leach represented the schools ...
- Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, so Wazzu's loss yesterday to UNLV by a score of 74-70 was just that, a loss. However, there were plenty of reasons to applaud both the performance and the progress the Cougs are making over the past few games. Let's get the bad observation out of the way. WSU turned the ball over a ridiculous 22 times. No one is going to beat many teams with such wreckless play, especially against a team that posted a 9-0 record going into the contest. Some of those errors might be attributed to Coach Kyle Smith going with a different lineup almost every game because of player injuries. Facts are facts and when there isn't a steady lineup, players struggle to play team ball. On the bright side, Wazzu shot a respectable 54.2% from the field, coupled with a very nice 56.5% from behind the arc. On defense, WSU held UNLV to just 30.4% from behind the arc and 50.9% overall. The Cougs outrebounded the Rebels by a margin of 33-20. Despite being down by ...
