ST. CARLOS — In Saturday’s third-round matchup with LMU in the WCC Tournament, Washington State saw nearly too many of its worst tendencies emerge.
Early in the second half, the sixth-seeded Cougars found themselves in foul trouble. They repeated the process of turning it over multiple times. Their missed jumpers didn’t reach the rim, and their free throw shooting woes nearly went out the window, resulting in a total of 12 points.
In spite of this, Western State University will face San Francisco in Sunday’s quarterfinals. The Cougars had a solution for every time seventh-seeded LMU’s bad habits surfaced or the Lions built momentum in their 94-77 victory. Nate Calmese and Ethan Price led the team with 22 points apiece, and Ri Vavers added 16 more, setting a new career best while playing for the Crimson Tide. Head coach David Riley had to have been in awe of the sight.
On Sunday, the contest between third-seeded San Francisco and eighth-seeded WSU will begin at 8 p.m.
“We simply reestablished our rhythm and raised the bar to twenty, or whatever it was,” Calmese mentioned. This team is becoming into a solid unit, in my opinion. I believe we’ve just been learning a lot over the past few weeks despite the difficulty, and we’re going to keep growing over the next few days.
Keeping in the spirit of competition and playing as a unit are the two main points that Riley and the team have been emphasizing over the past several weeks. “That aired tonight, in my opinion. On the field, we recorded 26 assists. They were a very physical, veteran squad, but we were able to defeat them on the glass. Plus, we’re pretty difficult to defeat when we appear like that.
There was a significant decrease in the Cougars’ lead from 16 points in the first half to 8 points at halftime. At the beginning of the second quarter, however, WSU went on an 11-2 run, with 3-pointers from Calmese, Isaiah Watts, and LeJuan Watts, as well as a scoop layup by Calmese. That put WSU back on top, 58-40.
With a little over ten minutes remaining in the second half, the Cougs took a 12–12 tie with an 8–2 run, but the Lions answered with an 8–2 run of their own, increasing their advantage to 58–40. Isaiah Watts scored a game-winning slam off a Calmese pass, and the run also featured threes from Vavers and Calmese (who also dished out seven assists).
San Francisco will be without first-team all-conference guard Marcus Williams on Sunday due to an NCAA rules violation, thus WSU will face a San Francisco squad that is shorthanded. Williams scored 17 points, including 2 from beyond the arc, in USF’s 121–113 home victory over WSU on February 1.
That paves the way for what can be a fruitful future for WSU. If the Cougars want to keep it that way, they need to keep playing as they did on Saturday, which included resolving errors with more encouraging sequences.
