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Cougs get Duke in Palm Springs for a November showdown

Washington State basketball is going to get a crack at Duke in Palm Springs this November, and that is not a sentence Coug fans get to read every year.

3 min readSpokesman.com
Cougs get Duke in Palm Springs for a November showdown

This is a damn good get for David Riley and a program that's been rebuilding from the studs for two straight seasons. Washington State will face Duke on Nov. 21 in Palm Desert, and for a roster carrying 12 newcomers, that's not a soft landing. It is a statement. The Cougars have never played the Blue Devils, and while Duke will likely enter the year as national title favorites after losing Cameron Boozer to the NBA lottery, they are not invincible in November. Riley's bunch gets to find out fast what they are made of.

This scheduling move pairs well with the kind of grit Jim Walden brought the Cougs to a bowl after 50 years: gone at 88. Walden took a program that hadn't sniffed a bowl in half a century and dragged it there. That same stubborn, unglamorous belief is what Riley is selling now. He isn't hiding behind a cupcake nonconference slate. The Cougs also have road trips to Murray State and neutral games against Eastern Washington and now Duke. It's a schedule built to test a team that lost its entire starting five for the second year in a row. The new faces, Sebastian Akins from Wake Forest, Jaylen Harrell from Providence, Jamari Phillips from Oregon, and a handful of others, will have to learn each other's names on the fly. Duke is not the place to do that. But it is the place to find out if you belong.

There is a direct line between this kind of exposure and what Cedric Coward’s Summer League debut was worth the year-long wait. Coward waited a full year to get his shot in Vegas, and when he got it, he made it count. That is the same kind of proving ground Riley is setting up for his new roster. Palm Springs in November is not Vegas in July, but the principle holds: you show up against big-name competition, you get noticed. For a program that has to recruit through the transfer portal every spring, a competitive showing against Duke is worth more than a blowout win over a low-major. It sends a signal to the next wave of transfers that Pullman is a place where you can play in big games, not just watch them on TV.

The specific thing to watch is how the Cougars handle Duke's backcourt. Jon Scheyer returns guards Cayden Boozer and Cameron Foster, and added John Blackwell from Wisconsin and Drew Scharnowski from Belmont. That is a veteran, physical group. Riley's guards, Akins, Harrell, and RJ Jones, will have to defend without fouling and execute in the half-court against a team that will try to speed them up. If the Cougs can keep it close into the final eight minutes, that is a win for the program regardless of the final score. It would mean the rebuild is ahead of schedule. It would mean Pullman has a basketball team worth paying attention to in December, not just March. And that is the only kind of progress that matters. Go Cougs.

From Spokesman.com

PULLMAN – Washington State will take on a blue blood in the opening weeks of the basketball season.

The Cougars will square off with perennial powerhouse Duke on Nov. 21 in the opening game of the Acrisure Series, at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, California. It will be the program’s first matchup with the Blue Devils.

Read the original at Spokesman.com

Briefing

Source
Spokesman.com
Published
October 2, 2026

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