Washington St.:
The Cougs are 8-1, coming off a win over Grambling St. Their loss is to Miss State and they haven’t beaten anyone of significance; best win is vs. Rhode Island.
Top Players:
6-8 Sr. forward Andrej Jakimovski (9.9pts, 5.7rebs, 32% from 3, leads them in 3’s made)
6-11 Jr. forward Oscar Cluff (9.2pts, 5.4rebs, 1.2 blocks)
The Cougs lost a lot of their talent from last season to transfers and the pros, Jakimovski is the one vet w/ significant time at WSU. This isn’t the most talented squad but Kyle Smith has his Cougs playing solid basketball at both ends of the floor, the advance stats/metrics love them but they’ve done it vs. modest competition. The Cougs don’t rely heavily on the 3 but shoot it efficiently. Defensively, they have been holding teams to a very low eFG%.
For the Broncos, they absolutely must clean up the TO’s and improve both the rebounding and defense. The sloppy play of late simply has to improve; you can’t count on outshooting/outscoring opponents, while being sub-par to terrible in other aspects of the game…it’s just not a recipe for consistent success.
Tilly is a question mark being in the concussion protocol but the Broncos should have the depth to overcome the absence of one guy should Tilly be unavailable.
Prediction: Broncos clean up their act, prevail 79-75.
going to be a matter of overcoming the physicality like in the 2022 NIT and if they can stop shooting themselves in the foot. If not…oh boy. But KSCU will be there and tick off broadcasting in an NBA arena!
Another player to watch for the Cougs is 6-8 forward Jaylen Wells, greater Bay Area kid from Sacramento, transferred from D2 Sonoma St. Season started slow due to an injury and has been coming off the bench, put plays big minutes. Has shot 8/12 from 3 the past two games, and had a double-double two games ago vs. Riverside, 18pts, 10rebs. And averaging 11+pts 6+rebs over his past 6 games. Could see him enter the starting lineup at some point if not today.
One other note on this Colangelo Classic ‘event’ (can’t really call it a tourney)…all four games include a WCC team. I don’t see any articles re: any sort of collab with the WCC so may just coincidental and the even is clearly focused on west coast squads. The others:
This is the devil’s bargain for these neutral site games. The opponents are better, but the fan experience is worse all around. How many die hard SCU fans are in SLC, Phoenix, Vegas, Denver, etc? And it’s usually some third rate streamer that provides the only way to watch (and yes, I include the P12 Network in that group).
USF is doing “neutral” site games in Chase. Maybe we could do the same in SAP? I wouldn’t want it in place of a decent home and home versus Stanford, Cal, or Utah State. But I would much rather do that than have the Broncos fly to Vegas and have to pay $30 to watch on Baller TV or something.
I bought a smart TV and told it “watch Santa Clara vs Washington State game” and it turned on enough to see Bal Turn Over Ball at the top, hustled back on D and Cam got a fast break dunk. lol We are up 20-16.
I am watching a full on combined Santa Clara effort right now. The WHOLE TEAM is working and I am liking what I see.
Second half: Washington adjusted to our front defense. This is when we need to make adjustments on defense. Hope our coaching staff picks up on this.
For a moment, I thought he was back in! Watching Luke McEldon is like watching Cam. They play and move the same! They played in same conference back East.
My stream ended with 1:03 minutes left to game. Happy to see we got back up for the W.
I had to step away from early 2nd half to about mid-2nd half, Caffaro didn’t play much late but McEldon did. Did Caffaro get hurt or just coach’s decision?
With Tilly out and Cam in some foul trouble, McEldon provided some good minutes at an important time in the game.
Not the prettiest of games and fortunately WSU isn’t a good 3pt shooting team. But given the 4 straight losses (D1 opponents) I’ll take any kind of win.
Great win. Despite some recent lumps, thought our tough schedule so far really helped us today. Washington State had not really played anyone difficult since Mississippi State in November. If anything, we should have learned by now you have to bring it from the opening tip to have a chance to beat quality opponents. We were ready to go today. Our Broncos are quite good when they don’t turn the ball over.
Great poise, limped to the finish line but just flat out needed the win. Super impressed with McEldon’s poise in his first impactful minutes. Jalen Benjamin DNP-CD so that’s something to watch for the future
We don’t have a Pipes-quality ball handler, which I think will probably limit our upside. But overall, we have a chance to start conference play with no more than 4 or 5 losses. I think pre-season, most of us would’ve take that, especially given how many new faces the team has. I’d be pretty satisfied if we can finish 3rd or 4th in conference play.
I didn’t see the game but the stat sheet tells the story: only 10 turnovers today (much better than the 20 or so they’ve been committing during the recent skid) and limiting WSU to 33% shooting bodes well for the defense.
Great going 3-1 against PAC-12 teams, especially since none were at Leavey, and it’s an extra sweet beating WSU after the recent season-ending loss in the NIT a couple of years ago.
I just noticed that Utah State defeated USF at home despite shooting just 30% from the floor and going 2/21 from three. Where were those missed shots on Wednesday??
