I haven’t written about basketball in a while, having taken a bit of a break around the holidays. I hope the holiday season was great for you! Mine was spent on a trip to Victoria just before Christmas (where I threw my back out in a foreign country — getting old is rad!), then spent time resting up and watching a ton of football and hoops on the back half of my winter vacation.

With my break now over and men’s basketball having completed its first chunk of play — and the next game not until this weekend — I figured I could use my tried and true football format to take a temperature check of where the boys are at after their first four games.

Let’s get to it.

Making strides — finally!

To say David Riley’s second season at the helm of WSU basketball hasn’t been what we all expected would be an understatement. But there are signs that the team — finally, mercifully — is coming to life after an excellent and comprehensive 81-67 win over Oregon State in Spokane on Sunday evening that improved the Cougars to 3-1 in WCC play.

It was a rough journey to get here, one that left us walking up to the line of thinking that maybe a coaching change would be in the best interest of the program after the season.

WSU has never been a basketball powerhouse, but like the football program in the wake of Mike Leach’s tenure, we have definitely come to expect a certain standard of competence. And on the heels of four consecutive postseason appearances — including one NCAA Tournament — getting off the mark 3-8 this season definitely wasn’t it. The Cougs did play a reasonably challenging non-conference slate (ranking 96th at kenpom.com), but it certainly was not so difficult as to suggest being five games under .500 with double-digit losses to Davidson, Washington (at home), Seton Hall, and Nevada (also at home). Oh, and there also was a loss to Idaho. Idaho. 

In an objective sense, WSU hit its nadir with a 14-point home loss to Nevada in game 10 that dropped the Cougs all the way to No. 173 in the rankings at kenpom — 36 spots lower than their preseason projection, and their lowest ranking since Ernie Kent’s final season. They’d tack on another loss to USC, which dropped the Cougs to 9-20 over their previous 29 games, dating back to last season’s second-half collapse. That, also, was the worst 29-game stretch since Kent.

Alarm bells were ringing. Loudly.

Beyond the record, they just looked bad. The play was sloppy, and outside of a couple of exciting games in Hawaii — which included a massive comeback to beat Division 2 Chaminade and a rollicking, 100-94 (regulation!) loss to Arizona State that was fueled by a 40-point Ace Glass explosion — everything else against was mostly just painful clunky drudgery. Sports are supposed to be fun, and WSU wasn’t even remotely fun to watch; the game tempos were generally slow, the defense was routinely giving up wide open looks, and if Mike Leach was still around to describe the offense that is supposed to be Riley’s calling card, he probably would have described it as constipated.

Things are now looking up, and if this seeming turnaround is to become legitimate this season, we might point to two games.

The first is the loss to USC. When the Cougs traveled to Los Angeles, there was little expectation they’d even be competitive. The Trojans were 90%+ favorites in predictive models, yet WSU made life incredibly difficult for them in a 7-point loss. The offense was still dreadful, but the Cougars’ did post their best defensive performance of the year to that point. It set them out on an upward trajectory that led to winning their next three, including comfortable victories over Eastern Washington and Mercer. Not to make too much out of wins like that, but after where the season started, wins against those two without any real drama was not a foregone conclusion. And the fact that they were led by the defense at least gave us something to hang our hat on, even if the offense was still pretty bad.

The second notable game is the win over Loyola Marymount on Friday. Not only is LMU a pretty decent team overall, the Lions feature a good defense that ranks No. 67 in adjusted efficiency at kenpom.com. Coming off getting throttled by Seattle in one of the more discouraging losses of the season, it figured to be a tough one, even at home. And it was: The Cougs trailed by 14 in the first 10 minutes before clawing back to lead by two at half. They’d generally struggled mightily to put the ball in the basket with the same constipated-looking offense.

But after halftime, something clicked. I have my ideas why — which I’ll get to in a second — but after scoring under a point per possession in the first half, WSU erupted for 1.38 following the break.² It allowed them to separate and build a nine-point lead, which they eventually gave away before surviving a game-tying shot at the buzzer. It wasn’t a perfect performance, but the offensive output was the sort of thing that made you think that maybe, finally, something was there.

It carried over into Sunday against the Beavers. Yes, OSU is quite bad (No. 224 at kenpom), but the Cougars have played other teams who are quite bad, and not looked as good as they looked on Sunday in beating them by more than expected with good performances on both ends.³ While the defense had been pretty good for a while, I chalked a lot of that up to deploying defensive-oriented personnel as much as anything; to this point in the season, games generally featured either good offense/bad defense or bad offense/good defense. This was our first glimpse of good offense and good defense since beating Saint Thomas in mid-November.

Which means maybe — just maybe — it’s time to back away from the ledge a bit. A start like this followed by a big surge to finish the season is not unprecedented. The last time the Cougars started this slow was 2022-2023, when they came out of the gate 5-9 (with a loss at No. 271 Prairie View A&M). They went on to win 12 of their next 18 games, which was enough to get them into the NIT.¹  

The next three games — at Saint Mary’s, vs. Gonzaga, and at San Francisco — will tell us a whole heck of a lot about how real this might be.

What We Liked: Offensive adjustments

In his first season, Riley imported his excellent offensive system from EWU by bringing a whole bunch of players with him. But this season — with all of those players gone — the free-flowing attack that leads to easy buckets around the rim was conspicuously missing in that early-season slog. Aesthetically, it was gross, and the stats backed it up: The Cougars were not doing the things that Riley’s teams typically do well, including making a high percentage of 2s with a high number of assists.

A lot of it seemed to be dictated by personnel that just didn’t complement each other. ND Okafor has made huge strides as a post scorer, so he was often planted in the post. But there’s a reason most teams don’t do that anymore: Not only is it not generally super efficient, it also really clogs things up for guards who can drive, such as Glass and Tomas Thrastarson. And without guys driving to make the defense move — or a dominant post player who demands double teams and is an excellent passer, which, for all of his improvement, Okafor still isn’t — it’s tough for shooters like Rihards Vavers to find space to get off shots.

It made for an offense that was extremely stagnant and clunky. I’m going to throw some numbers at you, but stay with me:

• Riley’s teams had finished in the top 6 nationally (!!) in 2-point percentage each of the last three years. But this year, they spent the majority of the season well into the 100s.⁴

• Relatedly, in those previous three years, Riley’s teams have ranked in or very near the top 100 nationally in average distance of their 2-point shots. But this year, they’re 239.

• A key indicator there? Every team Riley has coached has finished in the top 60 nationally in the percentage of baskets that came from assists; this year, they’re 317.

Riley, throughout his career, has always been able to scheme up those closer 2s that lead to the higher 2-point percentages. A lot of that had to do with fairly interchangeable personnel; for example, Ethan Price, Dane Erikstrup, LeJuan Watts, and of course Cedric Coward — despite being all different shapes and sizes — were all as comfortable in the post as they were at the three point line. This team just doesn’t have that kind of personnel, and it showed as Riley searched for how best to attack defenses.

But it seems like he might have finally found the key to unlocking the attack. In that second half against the Lions, Riley moved Okafor (and other post players Eemeli Yalaho and Emmanuel Ugbo) out of the block and utilized them as ball screeners or in high-post handoffs. Suddenly, there was all kinds of room for folks to operate around the basket: Glass — undoubtedly the team’s most gifted offensive player, even as a true freshman — piled up 14 points by making five 2s and taking just one 3-pointer. Okafor, meanwhile, showed he doesn’t need to be planted three feet from the basket to be effective, catching the ball farther away and attacking to score 10 points.

It continued against OSU. It wasn’t all smooth sailing — the Beavers adjusted by blitzing Glass after ball screens, which slowed things down considerably — but all in all, it was still a much more fluid and effective attack. It resulted in their highest points per possession (1.24) since Arizona State (1.32), and it didn’t require one player to have an out-of-body experience to do it: Four different players scored in double figures, and even Adria Rodriguez (who has struggled as much as any Coug in recent memory) made big contributions.

Defenses will surely adjust, but for the first time this season, it seems like the Cougars are doing things that maximize the strengths of each of their players. And that gives me hope.

Who Impressed: ND Okafor

Man, this guy deserves some serious flowers. After coming over from Cal as what looked like little more than a rotation big who could give you some defense and offensive rebounding, he has improved the weaknesses in his game considerably.

Offensively, he’s added an array of post moves that have turned him into a legitimate offensive weapon with the ball in his hands. His 2-point percentage is actually down a bit this year, as is his overall offensive rating. But that’s really just a function of higher usage — he’s taking more shots (and more difficult shots) than ever in his career and making them at a clip that is still high enough to be useful, commanding the respect of the defense. And as he showed in the last two games, he’s still a damn good screener who can do some things while moving.

On the other end, he’s become a dominant rebounder. Oddly, he’s never been that in his career, despite being an excellent offensive rebounder. Previously, he topped out at grabbing 16% of opponents’ misses when he was a freshman at Cal; last year, that had dipped to 12%, which is absurdly low for a player of his size. This year? He’s jumped up to 21%, ranking 145th nationally and fifth in the WCC. And he done it while maintaining his rim protection presence: He still blocks about 10% of opponents 2-pointers when he’s on the floor, ranking 39th nationally and third in the WCC.

Put it all together, and he’s made himself into the second or third most valuable guy on the team. That’s a heck of a jump.

What Needs Work: Winning on both ends

The big question here is whether they can defend AND score in the same game. They haven’t done that very often this year. Here’s a list of their adjusted offensive and defensive efficiencies for each game, via barttorvik.com. Note how often the numbers are at a similar level — and how different those levels sometimes are, where both are low or both are high:

They’ve made very real gains on defense this year, and while they’re far from elite, they’re on track to have Riley’s best defense ever. But that has typically come at the expense of offense. I hope as the offense continues to evolve and grow, they don’t lose the defensive part of their identity.

Up Next: The Gauntlet

Getting out of these first four at 3-1 was probably best case scenario. The team should feel good about that.

Now it’s time to prove it’s legitimate against competition that’s going to push them to their limits. And by “prove,” I don’t even mean winning any of the next three games — because I don’t think they will.

Let’s talk about the next two first: At Saint Mary’s on Saturday, and hosting Gonzaga next Tuesday. Those two games — against the kenpom Nos. 27 and 5 respectively — have a combined win probability of 12%. Put another way: Given the difference in quality of the teams, you’d expect WSU to pick up just one win if they played SMC 10 times at their place and Gonzaga 10 times at ours.

Then, there’s a trip the following Sunday to San Francisco. The odds on that one go up considerably … to 27%, which is a number that doesn’t even factor in how insanely tough USF has been at home in the last three seasons under Chris Gerlufsen.⁵ 

If the Cougs can somehow get one of those — any of them — I will be over the moon ecstatic. More realistically, I’ll still be thrilled even if they lose all three but play all of them closer than expected.

(I reserve the right to change my mind if they lose one in the final minute.)

1  Where, of course, they lost to Riley’s EWU in a game that maybe did as much to get him to WSU as anything else.

2  For context, an average Division 1 performance across an entire game this season is 1.08.

3  The Cougs’ Game Score at barttorvik.com was 86 — roughly the equivalent of playing like a top 40 team — which was their third highest of the season behind Saint Thomas (95) and EWU (90).

4  They’re now No. 98 after the last two games.

5  Yes, I know they lost to No. 298 North Alabama at home this year. That’s still just the second home loss for the Dons in the last three seasons.