In game one of the Maui Invitational, the Cougars — once again in this short season — did not exactly cover themselves in glory. Yes, they won the game, but that was only after falling behind by 20 points in the first half to a Division II team.

A furious rally in the second half featuring bench players Ace Glass, Eemili Yalaho and Rihards Vavers led them to victory.

If you didn’t watch the game and only saw the final score, you might think to yourself, well, only winning by 5 isn’t that bad — whatever? Dear goodness was it so much worse than that. WSU fell behind 39-19 after a 15-0 run by the Silverswords — broken up by a pair of Vavers 3s — was followed by an 8-0 run. In trailing by 20 to a Division II team, the Cougars were bad again in the ways we’ve repeatedly seen them be bad over the season-plus with David Riley as coach: Horrible defense (14 layups and dunks allowed) and mind-boggling carelessness with the ball (15!!! turnovers!!! IN A HALF!!!!).

Thank God it was a Division II team on the other side, because despite all that, the Cougars were still the favorite to come back and win:

Which, they obviously did. When WSU buckled down, took care of the ball, and locked in defensively, the Cougars ran right past Chaminade, as you’d expect: A small 11-5 run trimmed the deficit to 11 before the break, then the Cougars came out and outscored the Silverswords 40-12 over the first 11 minutes of the second half. Put those two runs together, and WSU went on a 51-17 spree to take control of the game. That’s what a Division I team should do to a Division II team.

Did the Cougs coast from there over the final 10 minutes? Yes and no! Yes, they coasted … in their minds. Which is why they didn’t truly coast to a win and you see that dip late in the graphic above: Chaminade — which looked completely gassed and defeated by the end of the surge, just kept chipping away as the Cougs inexplicably slipped back into “we got this” mode. Despite trailing by 17 with 10 minutes to go, Chaminade closed to within 3 twice in the last two minutes as the Cougs failed to make a basket in the final 7:15 of the game. Some missed free throws by Adria Rodriguez made it uncomfortable, but Yalaho and Glass were nails down the stretch from the line to put it away.

It should never, ever have gone down the way it did.

I want to be clear: Struggling against Chaminade — in a vacuum — is not the end of the world. The tournament is in their gym, and they’ve pretty famously beaten some Division I opponents over the years.¹ They were obviously extremely motivated last night, as this is their “Super Bowl” so to speak.

The problem is that what happened in this game is not a new phenomenon for the Cougars, who have regularly — under Riley — looked like they think they can just go through the motions and blow out a supposedly inferior opponent.

We now have three games our of six this year where WSU was completely unfocused on the task at hand (Idaho and Southern Utah are the others). It happened frequently last year, too; not always at the beginnings of games — sometimes it was in the middle or end after building a big lead — but there were indeed long stretches of mental breakdowns in a concerning number of games. Nate Calmese and his “casual attitude” were scapegoated for much of that, but it’s happening again with a completely different roster.

The throughline, of course, is Riley. I’m not sure what to call it other than some kind of weird unearned arrogance, because if we’re being frank, there is not a single coach or player in the program over these last two years who has done enough in their career to justify such an attitude. But that’s just how it looks to me. If it’s not that? Riley is a poor motivator who can’t get his players to execute for the majority of a game.

Neither option is flattering to the head coach.

I guess let’s pile on the coach some more. Here’s a completely wild stat: The Cougars’ bench scored 67 points and the starters scored 23. Most of that came from Vavers and Glass, who combined to score 51, but Yalaho also contributed 10 and even Kase Wynott hit a pair of 3s in his 7 minutes. It was the second game in a row that the bench outscored the starters.

Here was the starting lineup:

I don’t know what Riley’s strategy is here, but we’ve got six games — pretty much 20% of the season — to tell us that he’s not starting his best players. At guard, Morton continues to be steady, but Rodriguez continues to be an inconsistent mess. There were times last night when he unlocked the defense with clever passes and rightfully earned praise from the broadcasters, but it always comes with negative plays, too — his offensive rating of 98 (which is about 10% below an average Division 1 player) is reflective of four turnovers and his struggle to score points. If you’re going to play the way he does, he needs to be almost flawless with his passing to truly have offensive value, and he’s turning it over on about 30% of his possessions this year — a massive number for a guy who brings little else offensively.

Hildebrandt, meanwhile, has started a pair of games since Emmanuel Ugbo went down with his injury, and he was so ineffective last night that he played zero minutes in the second half as Riley went ultra small to counter Chaminade’s ball pressure.

I can’t help but think the slow starts and intensity would be mitigated by shaking up the starting lineup and putting Glass and Yalaho in there. Yalaho has been better off the bench than he was as a starter earlier in the year, but he sure looks like he’s figured some things out about his role. Until Ugbo is back, I’d like to see:

Yalaho can go back to the bench as your primary reserve big when Ugbo returns, and Rodriguez will be fine as a reserve for 15 minutes to spell Glass and Morton — but that’s kind of all he’s suited for. Vavers can be your sniper/floor spacer as needed, and Hildebrandt has shown you that he can give you 10 useful minutes doing the same thing.

Riley’s insistence on not making a change to his starting lineup remains baffling.

If there was something “good” to come out of the game, it’s that Vavers finally got it going. He’s a one-trick pony, but when that one trick from behind the arc is working, it’s game changing. He came into last night an abysmal 3-of-18 from deep, but emerged 10-of-30. Teams will once again be wary of allowing him open shots when he’s on the floor, and that changes the geometry of the defense in the Cougs’ favor.

And, like everyone else, his defense was putrid in the first half, as exemplified by the bucket Chaminade scored on him at the buzzer. But he definitely dialed up the effort in the second half — in concert with his offense — and he made a difference on that end during WSU’s big run.

The Sun Devils advanced in the tournament by picking up a nice win against Texas after our game. They were down by 10 late in the second half, then went on a 13-2 run to take a one point lead with five minutes to go, and from there it was back and forth down the stretch until Moe Odum put ASU ahead for good with a 3-pointer with 10 seconds remaining:

You might remember Odum lighting us up last year with Pepperdine. He had 36 last night and has been the Sun Devils’ best player. Yay!

I won’t dive too deep into the game, but I suspect that the game will come down to a couple of factors:

Kenpom.com projects ASU to win the game 78 of the time and by an average of eight points. The game will be broadcast on ESPN at 3 p.m. If the Cougars would like us to believe that what they’ve done so far isn’t who they really are, this would be a very good time to show us.

ADVERTISEMENT

Tempted to wait until January to start getting healthy? Maybe you just need something that is ACTUALLY easy to stick with.

Meet AG1: With just one quick scoop, you’ll support your immune health, gut health, energy, and fill nutrient gaps.

Give AG1 a try today to unlock their best offer ever.

Give AG1 a try today

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! Or this one: