This is the first edition of “About Last Night” of the 2025-2026 season. I’m going to be very honest: On the heels of football losing to Oregon State, writing about the first two basketball losses was just too depressing — the performances were that bad. To say they were dreadful would be an afront to dread.

But now that we’re off the mark with a win (and I’ve got a day off from my real job), let’s celebrate!

WSU (1-2) 81, St. Thomas (1-2) 71

In A Minute

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

• Stats

• Line o’ the night belongs to TOMAS THRASTARSON with 19 points (including 4-of-7 from deep), 7 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 block (and three turnovers).

• One stat to tell the tale: The Cougs held the Tommies to just one — ONE — offensive rebound on their 27 missed shots (3.4%). That set a new record for defensive rebounding in the kenpom era. The previous record belonged to a win over Northern Kentucky in 2022 (3.7%), a 21-point win about which I have zero recollection.¹

Highlights

Three Thoughts

1. How do you spell relief? T-H-R-A-S-T-A-R-S-O-N

Those first two games were so, so bleak. There was the two-point loss to Idaho that necessitated a massive comeback to get even that close, and a 16-point loss to Davidson in which they fell behind by 20 midway through the first half and never got closer than 15 the rest of the way. You might remember Game Score, my favorite short hand for how well — or how badly — a team played in any particular game. Well, the Cougs’ game scores in their first two contests were 15 and 6, which means they played in those first two games like a team ranked in the 300s.

This game? Much, MUCH better. You might never have heard of St. Thomas (their story is really cool) but they’re not a pushover; they’ve been picked to win the Summit League. Both kenpom.com and barttorvik.com gave the Tommies a 40%ish chance to win in Pullman, which honestly said as much about us and those first two games as it does about St. Thomas.

The Cougs were on the front foot from the tip, thanks largely to Thrastarson, who had a career game in the first half alone: 18 points, 4 rebounds, 1 block. He was 4-of-6 from 3, made both his 2s, and hit both his free throws. After two games in which the Cougs looked lost offensively and the guys taking most of the shots were bricking them, David Riley desperately needed someone to step up.

The Icelandic sophomore was ready. There’s a strong argument that he’s been our best player so far, which you love to see.

2. Helping hand

Maybe the most concerning thing about the first two games was just how un-Riley-like the offense looked. This is a guy who built his reputation by facilitating a slick, fluid, continuous motion offense that results in high-quality 2-pointers with regularity and open 3s as a counter. The result had always been a high number of buckets coming off assists, with Riley’s teams never finishing lower than 58th nationally in assist percentage. After those first two games, the Cougs were assisting on just 32% of their buckets, ranking in the 300s nationally.

In this one, that number was back to 50%. That’s still low for a Riley-coached team, but you could finally see the pieces of that offense coming together. A big part of that was the play of point guard Adria Rodriguez. The Spanish senior looked about as terrible as a player could look in the first two games. But in this one, he gave the team everything we were hoping for coming in.

His 9 points (3-of-4 on 2s, 1-of-4 on 3s), 5 rebounds, 4 assists (against 3 turnovers), 1 block, and 1 steal indicate a nice all-around performance. But I don’t think they even tell the whole story. At their best, point guards control the tempo of a game and do much to help their teammates get in optimal positions. Rodriguez did that last night, showing why Riley has been so high on him. For the first time, the players looked like they trusted each other, and Rodriguez had a lot to do with that. Shoutout to Jerone Morton, who also had four assists!

3. Work to do

Last night was positive! One of the things I loved the most is how they took advantage of the Tommies’ size deficiencies, both in terms of getting into the paint (18-of-28 on 2s, 64%) and rebounding. We mentioned the work on the defensive glass above (again, giving up just one offensive rebound is absurd), but they were good on their own glass as well, grabbing 31% of their misses.

A lot of that is due to the emergence of ND Okafor as a legit rebounding presence: He’s always been a pretty bad defensive rebounder for his size, but this year he has surged to hoovering up roughly 25% of opponents’ misses when he’s on the floor. Emmanuel Ugbo has been even better in that department, grabbing 33% of misses, which ranks 36th nationally. Add in Thrastarson, who has been quietly good in that regard, and the Cougs are dominating the defensive glass, ranking 3rd nationally right now.

These are really good things! But I also won’t sit here and declare the Cougs entirely “fixed” after this one. The Tommies’ defense is very likely quite terrible (kenpom currently ranks them 296 nationally) and WSU benefited from St. Thomas missing a lot of 3s that were reasonably contested but could have made it a different game had they gone in.

Additionally, after one really good game taking care of the ball against Idaho, the turnovers have been bad again (over 20% of possessions) the last two games. Finally hitting some 3s last night masked a bunch of that, but … this particular point of emphasis still isn’t improving much.

And Riley has to start making some decisions about the rotation. He’s playing A LOT of combinations right now, with nobody having played more than 68% of the minutes available.

Up Next: No. 49 Washington (2-1)

The Huskies come back to Pullman on Friday for the first time in a couple of years. Unfortunately, the computers think they’re pretty good. So far, they’ve got a blowout over maybe the worst team in the country, an uninspiring 14-point win² over another team in the 300s, and a competitive-but-not-really-close 9-point loss to top 20 Baylor on the road.

They’ll have the best player on the floor on Friday in sophomore guard Zoom Diallo, who is isn’t putting up huge raw numbers yet, but is proving to be an extremely efficient scorer and facilitator for the Huskies. And this will be the first real test of WSU’s new-found rebounding prowess: Washington rebounds 41% of their own misses, 45th nationally.

This one will just present a completely different challenge, as the Huskies are much more athletic than any team we’ve faced to this point. Regardless of the outcome, we’ll learn a lot more after this game.

Questions or feedback? Leave a comment at the website or hit us up at [email protected].

If you like what you read, please share it with someone who you think would also like it by either forwarding it to them by clicking one of those social share buttons!

1  Fun fact! This was the starting 5: Mo Gueye, Justin Powell, TJ Bamba, Kymany Houinsou and DJ Rodman. Off the bench (in order of minutes played) were Dylan Darling, Mael Hammon-Crespin, and Carlos Rosario. This was three years ago, and somehow it feels like a lifetime. Another side note: If you’re not following what Gueye is doing right now for the Atlanta Hawks, you should be!

2  That game against Denver was in the single digits throughout until they pulled away with a 12-0 run in the final five minutes.