Well, Wazzu baseball (7-6, 0-1 Pac-12) began conference play Friday by hosting the No. 4 Oregon State Beavers (10-1, 1-0 Pac-12). This one was over before fans could even settle into their seats as Cougar pitching did a massive face plant in the first inning allowing eight OSU players to score before recording the third out. Oregon State would cruise to a 13-3 conference win and look like the Omaha-bound team experts predict them to be.
Perhaps it's some kind of moral victory that the WSU relief pitching only gave up five runs over the final eight innings. Moral victory, one. Conference win, zero.
The series with No. 4 Oregon State continues Saturday at 2:05 p.m. and can be viewed on WSU Live Stream.
https://wsucougars.com/news/2022/3/11/baseball-cougars-drop-pac-12-opener-to-no-4-oregon-state.aspx

Let's take time for a postmortem on the Wazzu men's hoops loss to UCLA in the Pac-12 Tournament quarterfinals. Reflecting on how the game played out, there's more for the Bruins to learn than the Cougs.
UCLA struggled early on to find any sort of offensive footing. Then midway through the first half, it appeared that WSU would get a chance to make a game of it when Tiger Campbell went to the bench with two fouls. Unexpectedly, taking Campbell out of the game turned things around for the Bruins on defense. Washington State failed to find a combination of players that could match up against the tall and lengthy Bruin defenders. It would have been interesting to see if Coach Kyle Smith could have inserted his stellar freshman phenom Muhamed Gueye, but that wasn't meant to be. Gueye turned an ankle in practice before the tournament opener and wasn't available to play.
Over the next twenty minutes of play, UCLA had their way at both ends of the court. Their height advantage was just too much for WSU. The Bruins maintained a lead of around twenty points for most of the second half. With about five minutes to play Bruin Coach Nick Cronin called off the dogs and put in his reserves. That allowed the Cougs to chip away at the lead and make the final score appear respectable. Make no mistake, this game was over midway through the first half when UCLA took away all offensive effort by Wazzu.
Would the outcome have been different if Gueye were available? Cougar Nation would like to think that's the case, but we'll never know. Regardless, this has been a good year for Coach Smith and the Cougs. Don't know if they are worthy of an invitation to the NCAA tourney, but they certainly should get a ticket to the NIT. "I think we're in good shape," Smith said of an NIT berth. "I think being in a Power Five conference and finishing tied for fifth place, one game out of fourth. and our NET (currently 59) should put us in a good spot there. I'm very hopeful. We're gonna practice and assume we're in and be ready to go."
Either way, congrats and a tip of our collective hats to Wazzu men's hoops for a very solid regular season.

According to multiple reports, Wazzu men's hoops player Noah Williams pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of possessing a fake ID. The incident connected with the charge dates back to last September when a bouncer at Vahalla on College Hill spotted the fake ID when Williams presented it. A skirmish ensued and Williams was able to get the ID back and left the establishment. Police later questioned Williams who stated that he picked up his cousin's ID by mistake. Follow-up investigating proved that the ID was a fake, regardless of who it belonged to.
Fortunately for Williams, he was able to enter a plea agreement and get the two counts of misdemeanor assault, along with misdemeanor minor frequenting a bar charges dropped in exchange for pleading guilty to the ID violation. His sentence was set at eight months of unsupervised probation.