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Good afternoon! Before I get to the basketball, I just want to take a moment to wish you all happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day — a day which rightly celebrates a man who most folks associate solely with the Civil Rights movement on behalf of Black Americans in the United States, but who was actually dedicated to justice for marginalized people everywhere.

My students are always a little stunned when I tell them that MLK was not the popular hero in his time that he is made out to be today:

I suspect this is largely due to the sanitizing that happens with most historical figures as time passes;¹ King’s most comfortable quotes are now his most memorable, having become embedded in our public consciousness through our various information delivery methods. I grew up in the 1980s, so the comfy version is definitely the one that was taught to me in school.

Meanwhile, King’s most pointed criticisms of injustice continue to hide in plain sight.

“I Have A Dream,” which finishes on the positive and inspirational note everyone remembers, begins this way:

And if you’re wondering what happened in 1966 to cause the shift in “favorability” that you see in the graphic above, well … he started saying stuff such as this:

And this:

At the time of his murder, King was considered a radical by a majority of the United States largely because he dared suggest that America’s problems ran deeper and spread wider than the KKK in the south.² There’s a reason it took until 1983 — 15 years after his death — for this day to become a federal holiday.³ It would be another 17 years before all 50 states ratified their own observances.⁴  

If you truly want to honor the work of Martin Luther King Jr. on this day dedicated to his memory — the memory of all of him — perhaps consider one final MLK quote in light of what’s happening right this very moment in Minneapolis and other cities across the United States, where lawless agents of the federal government terrorize both citizens and non-citizens indiscriminately:

#103 San Francisco - 85 (13-8, 5-3 WCC)
#148 WSU - 80 (8-12, 3-4)

Coming off a couple of expected losses against WCC heavyweights, the Cougars had a golden chance to prove that they really had taken a step forward. And for 33 minutes, they played like they were ready to do just that, holding a seven-point lead on the road with seven minutes left to play. By win probability metrics, they were roughly 75% favorites to finish off the win.

But the game is 40 minutes long, as they say, and the Cougars fell apart:

Pain.

In A Minute

• Recap from our friend (and friend of the pod) Jamey Vinnick at Cougfan

• Stats

• Line o’ the night: EEMELI YALAHO with 21 points (6-of-7 2s, 3-of-6 3s), five rebounds, one assist, one steal, one turnover.

• One stat to tell the tale: USF shot 12-of-22 from 3-point range — the second time in three games that the opponent has shot better from 3 than from 2. The Cougs, of course, lost both games.

Highlights

WSU has not posted highlights of losses for quite a while now, and USF didn’t produce any highlights, so here are David Riley’s postgame comments on the radio:

Three Thoughts

1. Another collapse

On the one hand, I don’t want to put too much weight on a narrow road loss to a team rated more highly than WSU. The Dons were favored by six in the predictive metrics, and the Cougars lost by six. But there’s a larger context here, both within the season and also within the program overall.

The impulse is to blame the offense for only scoring five points in the final six minutes, and zero points over the final 2:30. But once again, the defense could not get stops when it mattered. The Cougs ended up giving up 1.32 points per possession to the Dons, a horrendous number that represents the most USF has scored against a top 200 opponent in two years. The Cougs, meanwhile, scored 1.24 points per possession — their fourth-highest mark of the season, even with the long scoring drought — which should have been enough to win the game.

This game joins losses to Idaho, Arizona State, and Bradley on the ash heaps of what could have been. At some point, you have to win more of these close games against beatable opponents than you lose.

Then there’s the bigger elephant in the room: How long do we make excuses for WSU being a program ranked around 150 under Riley? Losing to Saint Mary’s and Gonzaga — one in the top 30, the other in the top 10 — is the equivalent of losing to Arizona and UCLA in their heydays in the Pac-12, so whatever. But San Francisco? Certainly not a bad team, but a team that would finish near the bottom of a power conference.

We keep waiting for Riley to show us he can make this program into what’s expected — something approximating its historical normal. We’re still waiting.

2. 3-point defense

Digging into the defense, 3-point defense continues to plague the Cougs. If one was inclined to be as charitable as possible, they’d say that WSU is in the midst of a particularly unlucky run of hot shooting from opponents: SMC, Gonzaga, and USF combined to shoot 32-of-68 — 47%!! — from 3-point range.

But I’m not inclined to be charitable, given that in five seasons in charge, Riley’s teams have always defended 3s poorly, even if the results this year are even worse than normal:

An accepted doctrine in analytic circles for some time now is that the best way to prevent a 3-point make is to keep the opponent from shooting a 3 at all; the Cougars are among the “leaders’ in 3-point attempts allowed⁵ , and the only one of those last three opponents that took a below-average number of attempts from 3 was Gonzaga. And when teams do take 3s, they need to be as uncomfortable as possible. Some of USF’s 3-pointers were undeniably tough. But most were not nearly tough enough, with closeouts either coming late or coming from a perimeter player without enough length to really affect a tall shooter.

The best we can probably hope for the rest of the way is that future opponents counterbalance these hot shooting performances with poor ones of their own.

3. Stop complaining

WSU shot 38 2s, with 25 of those being defined as “at the rim” by barttorvik.com. And yet, the Cougars shot just three free throws all game. Those two facts do not seem compatible, and Riley made a point to say so in his radio interview after the game:

The question, you will note, was not about free throws. And Riley found it important enough to make sure he mentioned it. Twice. Unprompted.

I’m not arguing his overall point. However, the game was kind of odd in that USF didn’t really contest WSU’s shots once the Cougs got to the rim. If you watched the game, you’ll struggle to think of plays in the paint where a foul could have been called and wasn’t. And this tracks with what the Dons do: They’re 80th nationally in opponent free throw rate. They just don’t put people on the line much, and it was pretty easy to see during the game why that is.

Should the refs have called fouls in the last six minutes while we were jacking 3s? While we were fumbling every pass into USF’s hands? And what does that have to do with the defense being horrendous again?

Some coaches can get away with this. But when you’re 8-12 and under .500 in the WCC, it’s probably best to keep these thoughts to yourself, lest it get back to your team that their coach is being a big baby about things outside his control.

Up Next: at #207 San Diego

Finally, a game we’re favored to win for the first time in two weeks (if only slightly). It marks the beginning of a critical five-game stretch for the Cougs in which they’ll be favored in every game. They simply must make hay here, because the four-game stretch that waits on the other side — vs. #45 Santa Clara, at #6 Gonzaga, vs. #117 Pacific, and vs. #32 Saint Mary’s — is daunting.

Steve Lavin’s crew is improved, but they’re still pretty terrible on both ends. They are, however, good at two things: Taking the ball away on defense (31st in opponent TO%) and shooting tons of 3s on offense (67th in 3-point attempt rate). You will note that these are two areas where the Cougs have been suspect, as recently as yesterday!

Take care of the ball offense and keep USD from making too many 3s (they rank 216th in 3-point%, despite taking all those 3s)? The Cougs probably win comfortably. But … yeah. The possibility definitely exists for a crushing loss. 🤷‍♂️ 

Tip off is at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday on ESPN+.

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1  I’m old enough to remember how even Richard Nixon’s “legacy” was framed in terms of “Ping-pong Diplomacy” by the time he died, and not in terms of him being a criminal who suffered the greatest political humiliation in our country’s history.

2  There also was that little matter of a coordinated misinformation and discreditation campaign by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.

3  And only then after both chambers of Congress passed the measure by veto-proof margins that ensured President Ronald Reagan — who opposed the law — would sign.

4  South Carolina, which displayed a Confederate flag at its capitol until 2015, was last.

5  They rank in the low 200s in 3-point attempt to 2-point attempt ratio.