- Year two under Riley starts the same way as year one: a loss
PULLMAN – These days, college basketball seasons always arrive with an alluring sense of promise. The slate is clean, the roster is new, and the coach talks about how much he learned from last year and how different things will be in this one.
At Washington State, these last two years have started like that. Coach David Riley has talked with optimism about what he learned from his first season, then his second. He’s felt better about each roster he’s had, he says. Each October, he’s vowed to play better defense and scale back the turnovers.
But the Cougars have not delivered on that kind of potential. Last fall, they opened their season with a home loss to Idaho. And here on Monday night, they began Riley’s third season with a home setback to Davidson, walking off the floor as the buzzer rang on a 76-61 defeat.
“This has been the case ever since I’ve been a coach,” Riley said. “You work on things throughout the fall, throughout the summer, you build an identity, then you go to that first exhibition game, the first scrimmage or whatever, and that goes out the window. These guys kind of forget, they lose their mind. You kind of shore it up. You get to the real games. Same thing happens. And I thought this is a great example of that.”
This was about as inauspicious as it gets for the Cougars, who shot just 35% from the floor, including 5 for 24 from beyond the arc. Trailing by as many as 19, WSU allowed Davidson to convert 55% of field goals, including 63% in the second half. Offense was a mud slog for the Cougars. It was like a hot knife through butter for the Wildcats, who sank 12 of their 23 tries from distance, six from returning starting guard Sam Brown.
Providence transfer wing Jaylen Harrell scored a team-best 13 points for WSU, which used a 10-0 run to make things interesting in the second half, drawing within 47-38. But the Wildcats followed by getting three straight layups, stretching their lead back out to double digits, where it stayed for the remainder of the game.
On offense, the Cougs got lots of good looks. They just couldn’t knock them down. After the game, Riley said this is “one of the best shooting teams I’ve coached,” but it didn’t show: Oregon transfer guard Jamari Phillips connected on just 2 of 9 shots from deep, Harrell and Wake Forest transfer Sebastian Akins went 1-for-3 and UNLV transfer big man Ladji Dembele misfired on all three he tried. TCU transfer guard RJ Jones also went 0-for-2.
What’s behind those misses? Riley diagnosed the problem by pointing to the way his group couldn’t flow from its first look to an alternative one – the second action, he likes to call them. That was a problem last year’s team dealt with. One game into this season, these Cougars appear to have the same issue.
“It’s like right now in the offense, we freeze up after that first action, and all of a sudden we don’t know where those shots are coming from,” Riley said. “It’s hard to have confidence in those shots. You kinda get a random look, and you’re not ready for it, and I think some of that is just confidence. It’s hard to win when one team shoots 52% from three, and we shot 20.”
WSU played this game without East Texas A&M transfer Ronnie Harrison, who turned his ankle during pregame shootaround, Riley said. Harrison logged a double-double with 23 points and 11 rebounds in the Cougars’ exhibition win over Washington last week, and with his do-it-all skillset, he figures to play a central role on this team. Listed at 6-foot-8 and 228 pounds, Harrison is a senior and a compelling athlete, making his absence a big one for his group.
Riley hopes Harrison can play in WSU’s next game, a road test against High Point on Saturday, but he isn’t sure because the injury happened so soon before Monday’s game. If he’s out again, it’s a serious development for the Cougs, who need his shot-creation abilities and his veteran presence. It’s hard to overstate how big a loss Harrison’s is.
But on Monday, would he have turned a loss into a win? It’s hard to say. The Cougars looked disjointed on both sides of the ball. They gave up too many open triples to the Wildcats, who made offense look easy. Then they missed too many of those looks on offense. WSU has 14 newcomers, which Riley talked about after the game, and it’s not easy jelling that many players into a read-and-react system like Riley’s.
“It was clear we were on our heels a little bit all game,” Riley said. “It looked like a team with a bunch of newcomers playing a team with three returning starters that kinda knew what’s what.”
After the game, Harrell attributed part of this loss to effort, saying, “I feel like our effort wasn’t the way it was…. We practice hard every day. Since the summertime, we’ve been going at each other. We know what it takes to win, and I feel like today we didn’t show what we really had. That wasn’t the team that I play with all year. So we’re gonna get it right.”
That’s certainly not where the Cougars want to be after Game 1, talking about effort. Riley was relayed Harrell’s comments. Did he agree?
“It’s hard to think and play at the same time,” Riley said, “and I think that these guys want to go out there and compete. But when they’re thinking and they’re timid out there because they’re thinking, it looks the way it did.”
WSU has lots of time to turn this around, to make a second-straight season-opening home loss look like an exception to the rule. But it’s not a particularly encouraging start to the season for the Cougars, who now get a road game against a High Point team that won 31 games and made the NCAA Tournament second round last year.
- David Riley gets a little family trash talk as WSU hoops tips off
Earlier this summer, when David Riley was enjoying a break from the grind of coaching Washington State’s men’s hoops team, he got a ribbing from his brother.
Noah Riley, a quality control coach and analyst for the NFL’s New York Giants, gave him a hard time: Riley teams are so soft.
Back then, Noah was likely referring to the two problems that have plagued Riley’s first two WSU teams: Turnovers and defense. The Cougars finished last season ranked No. 292 in turnover rate and No. 248 in effective field goal percentage defense, painting a picture of an undisciplined, mistake-prone club.
Ahead of Riley’s third season at WSU, which begins with a home matchup against Davidson at 6 p.m. Monday, can the Cougars reverse those trends?
“Well, I think it starts in practice,” said Riley, whose team plays just five home nonconference games this season. “With our teams in the past that have won championships and won a lot of games, there’s been chippy practices, and it’s uncomfortable. And you walk away from practice with just a little bit of uncomfortableness because someone had to lose. I think that’s something that we’ve taken away this year.”
In the first year of the rebuilt Pac-12, WSU will use a retooled roster with 14 newcomers to try and turn around the problems that afflicted the last two Cougar teams. As they head into Monday’s season-opener, they’ll likely start the same group that fueled their team’s second and final exhibition game, a road win over rival Washington last week.
That will likely mean lots of touches for East Texas A&M transfer wing Ronnie Harrison, who tallied a team-best 23 points and 11 rebounds in that game, plus opportunities for Central Missouri transfer guard Lazerek Houston and Oregon transfer guard Jamari Phillips, each of whom scored in double figures. The rest of the Cougs’ starting lineup figures to include UNLV transfer big man Ladji Dembele and Northwestern transfer forward Tyler Kropp, whose size could make a difference for a WSU team that has struggled to rebound the past two seasons.
Against Davidson, which was picked to finish eighth of 14 teams in the Atlantic 10 preseason poll, WSU will likely need some more of that recipe. The Cougars played an ugly game to beat the Huskies – the game featured a combined 87 free throws, and neither team shot better than 40% from the field – but they did make nine 3-pointers. They got five combined from Providence transfer wing Jaylen Harrell and former Eastern Washington wing Casey Jones, who spent the last two years on a church mission.
From a 30,000-foot view, that’s the main contingent that the Cougars will use to replace several key offseason losses, including several to the transfer portal: Ace Glass (Vanderbilt), forward ND Okafor (Mississippi State) and wing Ri Vavers (Memphis), plus guards Jerone Morton (Kentucky) and Tomas Thrastarson (Seattle U), forward Eemeli Yalaho (NC State) and key reserve Parker Gerrits (Wyoming).
This WSU team features only two returners, forward Dominik Robinson and walk-on guard Dio Blakely, which means most of the minutes will belong to transfers. A few other names to watch include TCU transfer RJ Jones and French freshman forward Mohamed Sankhe, the latter of whom totaled 5 points and 3 rebounds in 15 minutes against UW. Wake Forest transfer guard Sebastian Akins also figures to make a splash, but because an injury sidelined him for both exhibition tilts, it’s unclear when he’ll be able to get on the court.
“We’ve got a lot of new faces, and so it’s been a really busy preseason for us trying to get in some concepts,” Riley said. “I think we simplified a few things to make sure that we’re able to play together and play hard, and I think that’s something that just takes time. And I think we’re we’re learning those lessons.”
- David Riley finally lets Cougs hit each other in practice
PULLMAN – When he looks back, David Riley realizes that in his first pair of years as Washington State’s head coach, he hasn’t let his players scrimmage each other in practice as much as he should have.
In those days, he ran his guys through all kinds of drills, all manner of concepts. That approach may have helped in its own right, but as Riley prepares for his third season with the Cougars, he wants to put players in more live situations. He wants to learn what makes each one tick, create more pressure situations.
After all, Riley figures, what happens if the first adversity WSU faces comes in its Nov. 2 season opener against Davidson?
“That’s a problem,” Riley said.
In their first season of the rebuilt Pac-12, the Cougars will try to avoid the ones that plagued them in their previous two years under Riley, whose teams couldn’t avoid turnovers or guard well enough. This year, with 14 newcomers and nine from the transfer portal, WSU has a chance to turn those around in a convincing way.
The Cougars opened the season with two exhibition matchups, a road loss to New Mexico and a road win over rival Washington, the latter of which can provide a window into how this team might operate. The key cogs in this group will involve East Texas A&M transfer wing Ronnie Harrison, whose two-way acumen figures to make him a weapon on both ends of the court, as well as Oregon transfer guard Jamari Phillips and Central Missouri (D-II) transfer guard Lazerek Houston, all of whom scored in double figures in their team’s win over UW.
This WSU team features only two returners, forward Dominik Robinson and walk-on guard Dio Blakely, which means most of the minutes will belong to transfers. Coaches had to hit the transfer portal to replace key players from last year’s team, including guard Ace Glass (Vanderbilt), forward ND Okafor (Mississippi State) and wing Ri Vavers (Memphis), plus guards Jerone Morton (Kentucky) and Tomas Thrastarson (Seattle U), forward Eemeli Yalaho (NC State) and key reserve Parker Gerrits (Wyoming).
So how will the Cougars’ new group mesh? That much will depend on Harrison, Phillips and Houston, as well as Providence transfer wing Jaylen Harrell, Northwestern transfer big man Tyler Kropp, Wake Forest transfer guard Sebastian Akins and UNLV transfer forward Ladji Dembele. Former Eastern Washington wing Casey Jones, who spent the last two years on a church mission, is also back playing for Riley.
“There definitely is some differences when you have guys that have played in your system before and you know what’s returning, how to build around that,” Riley said. “For us, I think that’s the beauty of how we play. We’re pretty versatile. We’ve had teams that have been really good with guards, with bigs, with wings. I think being multidimensional is really important for us, and getting that physicality was something that we really wanted to embrace. I think we did that. Now it’s time to figure out how it all gels.”
The Cougars won’t get much of an easy on-ramp into the season. Including its season opener, a Nov. 2 home matchup with Davidson, WSU plays only four Division-I nonconference home games, the program’s fewest since the 1973-74 seasons. It highlights the way coaches like Riley have to keep the team budget in mind when building schedules, trying to generate revenue via buy games that can be used in a multitude of ways.
Here’s a sample of WSU’s nonconference schedule: at High Point on Nov. 7, at Duquesne on Nov. 10, against Duke in California on Nov. 21, at Murray State on Nov. 30, at Weber State on Dec. 9 and at LSU on Dec. 28. The Cougs will be away from Pullman more than this program ever has been since the ’70s. Couple that with the team’s new-look roster and you understand the challenges facing the Cougars.
And that’s to make no mention of the reimagined Pac-12, whose best sport might be men’s hoops. The Cougs will host No. 15 Gonzaga in early January, during their university’s winter break, and a February road stretch against Gonzaga and San Diego State will prove tough. WSU also has a road date with Utah State set up for late January. If it’s not a gauntlet, it’s something close.
It’s not easy for any team, let alone one like WSU, which has turned over its entire starting five each of the last two seasons.
“I’d say that was probably the biggest thing for us in the off-season – we had so many new guys,” Kropp said. “We just saw what a team like New Mexico with so many returners, how valuable it is and how valuable that chemistry is. That was just a big focus for us in the off-season. As soon as we got on campus, we made sure, as often as we could, whenever we had an off-day, we were together.”
To turn things around from last season, when the Cougars went 12-20 overall and 7-11 in their second and final season as West Coast Conference affiliate members, they will have to shore up two things most of all: Defense and turnovers. A year ago, WSU turned it over on about 18% of its possessions, which ranked No. 292 nationally. That group also allowed opponents to register an effective field goal percentage of 53%, which was No. 248 in the country.
So what’s the key to reversing those fortunes? Riley likes to say it involves identifying selfless players.
“I think that starts in the recruiting process, is getting guys who want to play this kind of basketball, who want to play a team style offensively and defensively, want to be physical and disruptive, and I think we did a good job of that,” Riley said. “We’re getting guys that understand the importance of that, and like I said earlier, I think once you really understand how we play, it’s impossible to do it alone.”
