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#205 San Diego - 96
#146 WSU - 92

In A Minute

• WSU drops to #151 in kenpom at 8-13 overall and 3-5 in the WCC. San Diego improves to #200 at 9-12 and 3-5. Both teams are tied for 6th place.

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

• Stats

• Line o’ the night: ACE GLASS with 29 points (7-13 2s and 4-8 3s) with seven rebounds (four offensive), four assists, two steals … and four turnovers.

• One stat to tell the tale: USD hit 15 of their 28 3s, 54%. It is the third time in the last four games — all losses — that WSU’s opponent has shot better from 3 than 2.

• Bonus stat to tell the tale: San Diego grabbed 43% of their own misses, turning those 15 offensive rebounds into 15 second-chance points. The Toreros came into the game as one of the worst offensive rebounding teams in the country, claiming just 28% of their misses. The Cougs have been one of the best defensive rebounding teams in the country, spending much of the season ranked in the top 10; but in the last three games, they’ve given up 47%, 37%, and 43%, dropping their ranking all the way to No. 27.

Highlights

Once again, no highlights in a loss. Here’s a two-minute interview from coach David Riley with Chris King and Craig Ehlo.

Three Thoughts

1. Too predictable

If there’s one thing you can count on from Riley’s teams, it’s that they will regularly play down to their opponents. Yesterday morning, someone in the Slack posted that the Cougs were 2.5-point favorites on the road at San Diego, to which I responded:

San Diego is objectively inferior to WSU in any way you want to measure, and the Cougars — for the nth time in the last two seasons — played as if they only needed to show up in order to walk away with a win, falling behind by 18 points in the first half and never really getting back into the game.

One measure of how poor the performance was is this: According to Bart Torvik, the Cougs trailed by an average of 8.3 points in the game — about the same as games against Gonzaga (8.2 points) and Saint Mary’s (8.5.). Another measure? Their Game Score was 27, a performance on par with a team ranked about 275.

It’s a massive missed opportunity. We noted, ad nauseum, that the Saint Mary’s/Gonzaga/San Francisco stretch was really tough and unlikely to yield a win, but that the five games after were very winnable. And with a chance to start that stretch in excellent fashion, the team generally went through the motions.

The Cougs gave the illusion of making it a game when they finally pulled back to within two possessions with 2:37 to go, but of course gave up a wide open 3 about 15 seconds later. They also got within four with 20 seconds to go, and two with seven seconds to go, but a pair of free throws after that killed off the false hope for good.

The unearned arrogance of a Riley team strikes again.

2. More defensive ineptitude from 3

WSU is on maybe the most insane [derogatory] run of 3-point defense I can recall from a team that I follow. In the last four games, their opponents are 47-of-96 from beyond the arc, an insane 49%. The closest I can find is a four-game stretch at the end of Ernie Kent’s tenure in 2019 when Stanford-Cal-Oregon-Oregon State combined to shoot 43-of-93 (46%).

Of course, when you’re being compared to Ernie’s defenses, that’s a pretty bad place to be. And the same things that plagued Ernie’s defenses are the same things that plague Riley’s: Indifference. There will obviously be times where the other team gets an open 3 based off of moving the defense — that’s just basketball. But the number of times in the last four games where a defender has been nearby and failed to truly challenge the shot is maddening.

As if to affirm that I’m not crazy for noticing, Riley said as much after the game:

“We’ve got some soul searching to do on defense,” he said, “and it's it's embarrassing to give up an average of 90 points in the road the last two games. … It's all kind of connected. The energy of the game is connected. The rebounding was soft. The close outs were soft with low hands. They were comfortable. When guys are comfortable at this level, they're going to knock down shots.”

While I appreciate Riley’s terse and entirely accurate comments, nothing he’s done in the last two seasons gives me any faith that any defensive improvements will ever actually stick. There will likely be upticks — we’ve seen them last year and this year — but we’ve got enough evidence at this point to know that his team will always eventually settle back into high effort offense, low effort defense.

If it really mattered to Riley, it would change for good. It never does.

That will always limit their ceiling … and invite losses like this one.

3. Credit where it’s due

I’ve made some blanket statements about the team not showing up, but that’s not entirely fair to a few guys who played their asses off: Glass, ND Okafor, and Rihards Vavers. The game wouldn’t have even been as close as it was without Glass and Okafor, who are clearly the two best — and most valuable — players on the team.

Glass was a monster from all over the floor, particularly in the second half as he tried to will the team back into the game. Okafor was the Robin to his Batman, scoring 21 points on 8-of-10 2s and 5-of-6 from the line. He also grabbed six rebounds and had an assist while committing just one turnover in what was maybe his best game of the year. He bullied the smaller Toreros relentlessly all night without getting out of control. He’s become a heck of a player.

Vavers, meanwhile, returned after missing a couple of games with a concussion. He scored 16 points on 3-of-8 from deep and 5-of-6 from the line after getting fouled on two other 3s. He also actually led the team in defensive rebounding percentage, which speaks to both his effort and the lack of it from many of his teammates.

If only the rest of the team had played with the urgency of these three.

Up Next: vs. #267 Pepperdine

Kenpom has the Cougs favored by 10 points with an 82% chance of winning. They probably can show up to this one, go through the motions and still win. If the Waves — who shoot 28% from 3, 356th nationally — go off from behind the line, it might be time to just forfeit the rest of the season.

Stay tuned!

Tip off is on Saturday at 3 p.m. from Beasley Coliseum with ESPN+ on the broadcast.

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