Pacific haunts WSU again.
344 days ago, the No. 21 Washington State Cougars went into one of the toughest environments in college basketball and took down the No. 4 team in the country. On ‘Neon Night’ no less. The win all but secured WSU a spot in the NCAA tournament.
Now, 343 days later, WSU suffered one of their worst losses this century. Dating back to the 1996-97 season, no team has ranked worse than the Pacific Tigers on KenPom and defeated the Cougars. The other contenders include 2022-23 Prairie View A&M (ranked 271st), 2011-12 UC Riverside (ranked 277th), and 2003-04 Southern Utah (ranked 261st). Pacific entered Thursday night ranked 301st.
The Tigers finished off a season sweep of Washington State with a 70-68 win on Thursday night.
Last season, Pacific didn’t even record a single win in conference play. Now they have two, both against Washington State. It’s their first season sweep of a conference foe since the shortened 2020-21 season when they swept the Portland Pilots.
Thursday night’s loss isn’t like WSU’s first loss to Pacific, where Lamar Washington had a near unrepeatable game, scoring a career high 40 points and hitting the game winner in overtime. Those types of games you sometimes, frustratingly, have to tip that hat to. Not to excuse the loss because WSU should have never been in that situation in the first place, but if Washington was any worse in that game, WSU probably wins handily.
This time around, everything was just bad. WSU grabbed just 16 defensive rebounds, turned the ball over 15 times, and allowed Pacific to grab 16 offensive rebounds of their own. While WSU shot pretty well, hitting 53.6% of their shots from the field and 47.4% of their threes, it’s hard to keep score when you’re handing the other team the ball 15 times. It’s also hard to get possessions when you let the other team grab over half of their missed shots. Only three Cougs finished with more than one rebound in the game, and WSU played nine guys in this game, with Isaiah Watts playing in his first game since the loss at Washington.
It’s not even like Pacific was playing particularly well either. They also turned the ball over 15 times and only hit nine of their 25 three-point attempts. WSU was just outclassed and outcoached.
Pacific may just be the new WCC version of “Cal BS.” Not only was the game hard to watch on the court, but the broadcast also made things even more brutal with showing replays that would take up an entire WSU offensive possession.
Meanwhile, Kamie Ethridge’s team handled the Pacific women’s team 82-70 in Pullman. Ele Villa came on late for the Cougars, scoring 20 of her 23 points in the second half as WSU outscored Pacific 46-34 over the final 20 minutes of play.
The Tigers jumped out to an early seven-point lead thanks to a 10-0 first quarter run, but Tara Wallack helped ignite a 16-4 counterattack, scoring six during the stretch. WSU ballooned their lead up to a comfortable 14 after Astera Tuhina drilled a pair of treys, but the Tigers rallied back. Pacific was able to get buckets inside with ease, with WSU missing their rim protector, Alex Covill. The Tigers flipped a 14-point Cougar lead into a tie game at the half with an 18-4 run over the last five minutes of the second quarter.
As the teams wrestled for the third quarter lead, Ele Villa, Dayana Mendes and Wallack gave WSU the spark they were looking for with a 12-2 run to put WSU up seven. WSU rolled that momentum into the fourth quarter, where they spent much of the final frame matching every Pacific bucket with two of their own to grow their lead out to as much as 16 and seal their ninth conference win on the season.
Both teams will return to action Saturday, with the men traveling to San Francisco and the women hosting San Diego.