As the second half of Washington State’s latest contest unfolded, a road test against San Diego on Wednesday night, the Cougars began to score with ease.
Freshman guard Ace Glass got going. So did forward ND Okafor, who looked unstoppable around the basket. In his first game back from a two-game injury absence, Ri Vavers knocked down several three-pointers.
But WSU headed back home with a 96-92 loss to San Diego, the Cougars’ fourth straight setback, because they couldn’t produce enough stops on defense.
All told, USD shot 52% from the field, including a scorching 15 for 28 from deep, which comes out to 54%. Transfer guard Ty-Laur Johnson tallied a career-high 28 points for the Toreros, who also got four three-pointers apiece from Toneari Lane and forward Vuk Boskovic, underscoring the trouble the Cougs have faced bothering teams on the perimeter lately.
“I just need to know what I’m getting from guys,” WSU coach David Riley said in a postgame radio interview. “That’s a huge deal right now. A couple guys that we’ve felt like turned a corner, especially defensively, rebounding-wise, kinda laid an egg today. We’re not gonna become a good team until we know what we’re getting consistently from guys.
“That’s a big deal. We’ve got some soul-searching to do. This is a low point in the season. We need to bounce back.”
It’s a brutal result for the Cougars (8-13, 3-5 WCC), who needed a win in the worst way. Coming off back-to-back losses to Saint Mary’s and Gonzaga, the West Coast Conference’s top two teams, WSU had a chance to turn things around in a road matchup against San Francisco over the weekend. Instead, the Cougs let a late lead slip through their fingers, leading to a third straight defeat.
Things got even worse for WSU against San Diego. The Cougars trailed by as many as 18, watching the Toreros bomb away from the three-point line. Some were contested. Others were not. It didn’t seem to make any difference to San Diego, which hadn’t scored more points against a Division-I opponent since 2018, when the Toreros scored 103 points in a double-overtime game.
The last time they cleared the 96-point mark was in the 2006-07 season.
That’s about where things are for the Cougars, who are permitting an average of 89 points per game in their last four contests, all losses. It’s clear that they’re missing the perimeter defense of sophomore guard Tomas Thrastarson, who is expected to miss about another three weeks with a stress fracture in his foot, but it’s possible the team’s problems run even deeper.
Still, the Cougars had a chance to come back. With about 90 seconds to play, WSU guard Jerone Morton went to the free-throw line and knocked down two shots, trimming USD’s lead to 92-85. A few seconds later, wing shooter Ri Vavers was fouled shooting a trey, and he followed with a 2-for-3 effort at the stripe. That brought the Cougs to 92-87.
After the Cougars fouled to stop the clock and the Toreros sank two free throws, pushing their lead back to 94-87, Glass, who totaled 29 points, responded with a step-back triple. San Diego’s lead was down to four with 20 seconds left. Then, after WSU earned a stop on the other end, Okafor finished a layup to draw within two with seven seconds to play.
On the ensuing inbounds pass, Glass went for a steal, but he was called for a foul on USD redshirt freshman Gavin Ripp, who hit his two free throws for the final margin.
“It’s all kinda connected. The energy of the game is connected,” Riley said. “The rebounding was soft. The closeouts were soft with low hands. They were comfortable. When guys are comfortable at this level, they’re gonna knock down shots.”
Making things tougher on the Cougars: They permitted 15 offensive rebounds for 15 second-chance points. This comes against a Torero team that entered grabbing less than 10 offensive boards per game, ranking No. 284 nationally in that department. They also ranked No. 303 nationally in KenPom’s offensive rebounding percentages.
But those kinds of patterns haven’t seemed to make any difference around Washington State, which has often become the victim of opponents’ best nights on several fronts. San Francisco nailed 12 triples and grabbed 10 offensive rebounds. Gonzaga pulled down 17 offensive boards. And the number was eight for Saint Mary’s.
Where does WSU go from here? The Cougars’ next game is another that profiles as winnable, a home matchup on Saturday against Pepperdine, which has lost seven of its past eight games. Can the Cougs win that one? Certainly. But with losses like this one to San Diego, they’ve also proven they’re equally capable of dropping a head-scratcher, the kind that leads Riley to use phrases like “soul-searching” after the game — not once, but twice.
“We’ve got some soul-searching to do on defense,” Riley said. “It’s embarrassing to give up an average of 90 points on the road in the last two games.”