Well, it’s Sunday morning, which means most of your are eagerly/anxiously awaiting the NFC Championship Game that is going to kick off around 3:30 this afternoon. Hopefully, you’ve got some fun planned for watching the game this afternoon.

I’ll be heading over to a friend’s birthday party to watch most of it, then driving to Seattle for a comedy show — while the game is finishing up. Such is life when you buy the tickets before you know the home team will be in their biggest game of the year at that same time.

Thankfully, the Cougs gave us some good vibes on Saturday with a 16-point win over Pepperdine. It wasn’t without its own somewhat anxious moments, but when you’ve lost four straight, just about any win is an improvement.

#151 WSU - 95
#267 Pepperdine - 79

In A Minute

• WSU improves to #147 in kenpom at 9-13 overall and 4-5 in the WCC, remaining in 6th place. Pepperdine drops to #271 at 6-16 and 1-8, remaining in last place.

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

• Stats

• Line o’ the night: ACE GLASS with 18 points on 13 shots, five assists, three rebounds, two steals, and two turnovers.

• One stat to tell the tale: WSU shot a whopping 37 3s and hit 16 of them (43%).

Highlights

We won! So you get actual highlights:

Three Thoughts

1. They are who they are

The Cougars surged to a 20-point lead less than nine minutes into the game behind a 3-point barrage that included makes by four different players. Rihards Vavers, returning to the starting lineup, was a monster, drilling three of them during the run while also adding a couple of layups.

But at this point, we know what the Cougars are, and they are just not actually a very good team. And not-very-good teams typically don’t continue to roll over their opponents — no matter how bad — and sure enough, within six minutes, Pepperdine had closed to within five. It stretched back out to 10 at half, then dwindled back down to five with 14 minutes to go.

But a not-very-good team with a really good offense is still good enough to play with its food against a terrible team at home and not have it end badly, as a 20-3 surge opened up a 22-point lead with eight minutes to go. That was more or less the end of the game, as the closest the Waves would get after that was 16 with 8 seconds to go after a meaningless trio of free throws following a foul on a 3-pointer.

The Cougars ended up scoring 1.34 points per possession, their second-highest mark of the season. The 37 3-point attempts was a season high.

2. The defense still stunk

Pepperdine is ranked 315th nationally in kenpom’s adjusted offensive efficiency and ranks dead last in the WCC in points per possession in conference play, so I’m just going to say this plainly: The Cougars’ inability to stifle the Waves yesterday probably tells us everything we need to know about whether we can expect anything better from the defense the rest of the way.

Pepperdine scored 1.11 points per possession after scoring about 0.90 against everyone else in their first eight conference games. The same culprits were there that we’ve seen repeatedly over the last month, so I won’t rehash it. But if the Cougars play even a modicum of defense, they probably win by 30+. Instead, the Waves hung around because WSU’s defense allowed their offense to punch way above their weight.

To David Riley’s credit, he didn’t try to gloss over it postgame.

“We’ve still got to get our defense right. You know, 79 points is too much,” he said. “It's something that we’ve got to continue to grow. We've shown we're capable of it through stretches this year. …

“I thought we started contesting shots a little bit more (during the 20-3 2nd half run). You know, that's something that we've been really disappointed in is is our 3-point percentage defense. … I thought just getting a high hand up and being a little more urgent was was the biggest thing.”

He’s not wrong — they have been good at times this year on defense. He’s also not wrong that the urgency comes and goes. And as I said in the last newsletter, that’s going to always limit this team’s ceiling, something we saw yesterday as the team see-sawed between blowing Pepperdine out and letting them back in and then finally blowing them out.

3. A special moment

Shoutout to walk-on freshman guard Dio Blakely, who got to score his first points of his career while also picking up a rebound and a block in his two minutes of the blowout. It’s always fun watching teammates go crazy for a guy who works his ass off in practice and then gets a short moment in the sun.

Up Next: vs. #119 Seattle

The last time the Cougs played the Redhawks, the Redhawks made the Cougs look patently awful in front a large contingency of WSU fans at Climate Pledge Arena. And it sure appeared like Chris Victor’s squad was on the ascendency, a thought that seemed correct as Seattle held a five-point lead in the last two minutes against Gonzaga in their very next game.

They weren’t able to get that across the finish line, losing in overtime, and it’s been a mixed back for the Redhawks ever since with subsequent losses to Saint Mary’s (by 17), Oregon State (by 13), Gonzaga again (by 21), and Pacific (by 2). There were a couple of comfortable home wins against San Diego and LMU, but the takeaway is that Seattle U isn’t quite ready for primetime.

There are some interesting elements about this one. First off, the Redhawks have been a bit worse in road games, and they’ve lost all four WCC contests away from home. They’ve been a bit worse defensively on the road than at home:

Now, their offense is a bit better overall in these games, but it’s actually been putrid in their last two, at Oregon State and Pacific. And defense is their bread and butter, so the fact that it has not been as dialed in on the road is the sort of thing you love to see if you’re about to host them — even though it has still been very, very good.

It’s also worth noting that WSU’s first game against Seattle was really the end of the Cougs’ painful offensive performances. In the seven games since, the Cougars have been superb at scoring, save for the matchup with Gonzaga — and even that wasn’t terrible, considering the Zags stifle most everyone.

The one thing that worries me most about this one is that the Cougs will fall in love with the 3 again the way they did yesterday. Seattle makes getting in the paint incredibly challenging, and it can be easier just to settle for a difficult 3. Last time out, the Cougs took 27 of them … and made just four. That’s surely a bit of bad luck, but the Redhawks also make life real hard. Settle for too many 3s late in the clock, and it’s probably going to be another ugly contest.

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

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