Yes, WSU will be a part of the Madness.
Let’s open up with some navel-gazing. As any of you who live east of the mighty Mississippi know, watching the Washington State Cougars basketball team can be a chore, especially during the week. Games often don’t end until around midnight, which makes for a rather miserable following day if a person opts to watch the entire game. I, for one, do not. Matter of fact, I hadn’t seen the Cougs win a game with my own eyes since they won at Washington. After that it was a stint overseas, then more late night weekday games.
Finally, for the first time in weeks, I got a chance to sit down and enjoy a Cougar game last Saturday at ASU. Well, “enjoy” turned out to be the wrong word, as this WSU team I’d heard and read about, which beat Arizona 40 hours prior, laid a big turd. Fast forward to late Thursday when WSU trailed USC for nearly the entire first half, and did not look like the better team. I opted for shuteye, waking up at 245 a.m. and checking my phone and expecting the worst, as I had with Arizona. But no! The Cougs won! After playing like crap until I went to bed, of course.
Then came Saturday, again, and a chance to watch the entire game, again. I hadn’t even settled in on the couch before UCLA led, 11-2. Great. Then 11-2 became 16-4 became 19-6, as UCLA’s guards were getting into the lane seemingly at will, while UCLA big man Adam Bona gave WSU’s bigs fits in the post. It got so bad early on that I was honest-to-Christ wondering if somehow, despite all logic and clear thought, my ability to watch the game was the problem for WSU (almost certainly the dumbest thing for a fan to ever think and also something nearly every fan believes at some point in his or her life, right up there with a lucky shirt or certain position on the couch and the like).
But then – then! – things began to turn. WSU got, shall we say, a friendly whistle for what seems like the first time in the history of conference play. At the same time, Rice and Wells began to heat up and suddenly WSU had turned a 25-15 deficit into a 40-32 – damn near 42-32 if what may have been the greatest end-of-half play in WSU history hadn’t come after the horn – halftime lead.
As is often the case against a team like UCLA, regardless of its talent level or record, that bit of breathing room was basically erased within two second half minutes. From the 18-minute mark to just under four minutes, it would be another exercise is coping with stress. As you may read, the game seemed to turn during a two-minute stretch quick stretch, first on a flagrant foul the officials issued to UCLA’s Will McClendon, resulting in an ejection (I didn’t think the play warranted that degree of severity but also I was not upset!), then on two UCLA shot clock violations. Just like that, WSU had turned a three-point deficit into a five-point lead. You’ll notice I didn’t mention anything about momentum because, as we all know, it does not exist.
While things went much better for WSU after the foul ruling and ejection, I’m a tad skeptical of the call’s true impact. First, Jones missed both ensuing foul shots. Second, McClendon had made next to no mark on the game, having logged 11 minutes, 0 points and one rebound. The extra possession did help, though, as Wells buried a three to tie the game, the Cougs dialed up the pressure on defense, and WSU wouldn’t trail the rest of the way.
As the final horn sounded, along with it came a Cougar season sweep on the L.A. schools (yes, 3-0 and not 4-0 but whatever), a 15th home victory, a 14th conference win, and another step toward a decent seed in the NCAA Tournament. I’m sure we all saw that coming back in November, right??!! But this ain’t November. As the college hoopheads like to say, THIS. IS. MARCH! And for the first time since 2008, your Washington State Cougars will be a part of it, and I might even be able to watch before bed time! Hell MF’ing yes.
Other tidbits:
- The color-on-color uniforms were pretty goddamn great and it would be cool if the same thing happened in WSU’s home finale against Washington.
- If WSU wants to make a run in March, the defense needs to improve. USC shot over 50% on Thursday and UCLA almost reached that mark Saturday.
- The rebounding, however, is pretty damn good, as WSU outpaced UCLA on the glass 39-24.
- Maybe it’s just a result of the matchups WSU faced this weekend, but Oscar Cluff’s minutes and effectiveness were largely absent this weekend. After logging at least 23 minutes in five straight games, Oscar’s last four games have seen him on the floor for 12, 13, eight and nine minutes, respectively.
- Isaiah Watts definitely had a talented-freshman weekend! 18 points to save the game Thursday, six points and five fouls on Saturday. I’ll take it.
- The Cougs currently sit 37th in NET and 39th in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings, sporting a 6-3 Quad 1 record as Colorado clings to No. 30. Hold the line, Buffs!
- Since it’s still relatively early in the day, only a couple bracket prediction have been updated as of this “press” time. First is CBS, where Jerry Palm has the Cougs on the 6 Line in Omaha.
Also, On3 has WSU one seed line lower, but also in Omaha.
While it’s always fun to look at these snapshots/forecasts, it’s also worth noting that predicting locations and matchups for anyone outside the top 12-15 is largely a futility exercise. But again, it’s still fun!
- In a matter of seconds, we all went from “screw you, UCLA! to let’s go Bruins, beat Arizona!” Sports are funny.
Poor old UCLA, when will that little also-ran ever catch a break from the big, mean refs? IT’S NOT FAIR!
Highlights!
Women’s Basketball
Not to be outdone, the Cougar women went on the road, ruined Senior Day in Boulder, and picked up a yuuuuuge resumé-building win in the process, scoring the game’s final 14 points and shutting out the Buffs for the game’s final 2:56 enroute to a 72-63 win. Most projections have WSU squarely on the bubble, so this win should help immensely.
Next up for the Cougs is a huge game in the Pac-12 tournament opener, when they take on the Cal Bears in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Of all the must-wins, this is near the top! Win that one, and it’s one final chance to get a win over Stanford.
Even the thought that we could have both the men and the women dancing in the same season is just, damn it’s incredible.
This Week or Two or Four in Parenting
Many weeks ago, my Air Force side hustle presented an opportunity to spend a couple weeks in Munich during February. I told noted Europhile Mrs. Kendall about this, and she immediately insisted that I try for it, with the intention of joining me. I got on the trip, and we set about finding someone to look after the kids. We looked, and looked, aaaaaaaaaand looked. If the term “shaking trees” were to be taken literally, there was not a tree left in the continental United States that stayed still. As we closed to within 10 days of departure, things were looking grim, and Mrs. Kendall was putting on a brave face about not being able to go, even though it was obvious that she was dying to get back over there.
It got to the point that I was asking homeless drifters if they wanted to look after my two kids in exchange for a carton of smokes. Well, I was prepared to do that anyway. The crazy part is that, at their ages, my kids are mostly independent. Just give them a ride or two, maybe make a couple dinners, and they’ll take care of the rest, so long as the internet works. Thankfully, a stepkid of an acquaintance stepped up, for a price, of course, and we booked a flight for Mrs. Kendall to join me in München for my second week. We even left them alone for a night on either side of the trip because we wanted to reduce the cost totally trusted them to take care of things on their own.
Thing ended working out for all parties. Mrs. Kendall and I had a wonderful time in Deutschland, and the kids didn’t have to deal with their oppressive parents for an extended period of time. They even got a not-insubstantial amount of chocolate bars and Haribo gummy bears out of the deal, as if not being under the parental thumb for a while weren’t enough of a reward.
In other odds and ends, the 12 year-old keeps pulling teeth, in the most literal sense. It’s gotten to the point that he’s even asked, “where do these things keep coming from?” The tooth fairy went on strike long ago, so the kid is on his own. He also pulled off a joke in solid deadpan style the other night, when we were talking about his early days. “I thought I was born on the highway, because that’s where most accidents happen.” I appreciated this line far more than Mrs. Kendall did.
The younger boy has also taken to playing basketball during health class at school. At one point early in the week, he felt the need to inform us that he was “cooking” on the basketball court, and “leaving ankles all over the floor.” You’ll forgive me for maintaining a high degree of skepticism. Then again, this is the kid who, before playing his first ever basketball game back in 2020, said “Whatever dad, I’m the best player out there” when I told him how important it was remember that he was on a team, and that he could contribute a lot without scoring points.
On the teenager front, we’re on to javelin throwing, as wrestling has concluded for the season. The good news is that I’m pretty sure staph isn’t as big a fan of the outdoors as it is of wrestling mats. We went to his first track meet the other day, and the girls were first up, so we stood around for a bit. I could only see like 3-4 boys milling about, so I figured we’d be in and out of there in a decent amount of time. Then the girls finished, and something like 15 boys seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Super. He got his three throws off in what wasn’t a terrible amount of time, and even did pretty good! For almost never working on it outside of practice, he finished 4th. Unfortunately, all the kids ahead of him are from his school.
This weekend brought his now annual trip to the east side of the state for a Junior ROTC drill competition. As with last year, that meant a 0400 Friday departure from school. Yippee. If that weren’t enough, he and his buddies decided to hit Waffle House beforehand, meaning that he needed to leave the house at 0230. “Dad, Waffle House before the trip is a tradition!” A tradition that’s lasted two years? “Yes.” He was directed to find a ride, and thankfully he got one, because there was no way this old man was gonna get out of bed to drop him anywhere at that time of night. Fortunately, the bus returned to school before midnight Saturday evening. And in another instance that will surely make me a contender for “dad of the year”, he was standing alone in the dark when I arrived to pick him up, as everyone else’s parents had already policed up their kids. I blame Mrs. Kendall’s insistence that we finish a Peaky Blinders episode.
While the teenager was marching around and beholden to some sort of arbitrary scoring system, we had to venture out to buy the 12 year-old some new baseball shoes, as practice starts this week. Go Mets! I was wandering around the equipment area, trying to decide whether I was going to buy a new box of practice baseballs. He wandered over and asked what I was doing. “Looking at these balls”, I replied.
“That’s what she said.”
Aaaaaaaaaaand we’re done here.