Washington 92, Washington State 64
by Grady Clapp on Jan 30, 2010 6:40 PM PST
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Yep, it was that bad in that second half.
Player of the Game: Xavier Thames. Career-high 15 on 6 of 8 shooting, including 2 of 3 from three-point range.
Unsung Hero: Nikola Koprivica. First ever double-double, with 13 and 11. Shot fifty percent from the field and beyond the arc. How insane is it for Nik and X to have a night like this and get absolutely no help from our regular contributors?
Play of the Game: I had radio only, so you'll have to help me out. I'm betting it was something from the first half.
It was over when... The second half began.
Stat of the Game: I'm thinking the 56-24 second half margin is the defining part of this game.
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Reggie's steal and dunk.
Easily the play of the game.
CougCenter WSU's second main blog
by Craig Powers on Jan 30, 2010 6:56 PM PST via mobile reply actions 2 recs
That or the Cougar defense
pulling a Houdini and disappearing entirely in the 2nd half.
by TiltingRight on Jan 30, 2010 10:26 PM PST up reply actions
Agreed
The best part about it was the look on his face as looked at the UW bench.
Either that or Capers back door slam in the 2nd half.. though that one is disqualified b/c we were down by 20
It's at the 1:05 mark of the "highlights" in the player to the right.
by Jeff Nusser on Jan 31, 2010 10:47 AM PST up reply actions
Coincidentally, that's where you should stop watching the highlights
Also, watch them on mute if you’d like to avoid the blatant homerism from the announcers.
by Brian Floyd on Jan 31, 2010 10:52 AM PST up reply actions
The AP's explanation of the play
“Even with their star scorer stalled, the Cougars taunted the Huskies early. The most brash example came with 4 minutes remaining in the rugged opening half, when Moore, a freshman point guard from Seattle’s Rainier Beach High School, stole the ball in the backcourt, soared for a right-handed slam. Moore, who finished with 13 points, then flexed and glared at Washington’s bench and at former Huskies’ Pac-10 player of the year, Brandon Roy, who was sitting three rows back.”
Haha.
Way to make a story out of nothing folks. I doubt Reggie was intentionally looking at Roy.
CougCenter WSU's second main blog
by Craig Powers on Jan 31, 2010 3:43 PM PST up reply actions
you didn't see him flex and stare? did you see the play? pretty hard to miss.
Damn, my eyeball tastes good.
Personlly, I didn't see any flexing
And it was right in front of me. But he did give it a good long stare, for sure.
Ugly game
Easily ranks as among the most embarrassing losses, not only did they seem to quit in the second half they did it against our biggest rival.
Interested to see what this does to this team, learn from it and get better or don’t learn anything and fold the rest of the season. I think its the first one personally.
GO COUGS!!!
As embarassing losses go,
that was by far the worst implosion I have ever seen of a team in a half in any sport. It just made it worse that we had a 4 POINT LEAD AT HALF!!
by displacedcoug on Jan 30, 2010 10:53 PM PST up reply actions
Forgot about that one.
I didn’t see it, so my statement still stands…
by displacedcoug on Jan 30, 2010 11:26 PM PST up reply actions
OK St-WSU says hello
To put it in perspective, this was not that embarrassing.
by Brian Floyd on Jan 30, 2010 11:06 PM PST up reply actions
Yea, but we all knew we here that bad back then
We are not this bad of a team this year. Yes, we probably were not going to win this game, but to lose like that……
by spokanecougar on Jan 30, 2010 11:10 PM PST up reply actions
Look, I'm going to revel in the win ... BUT
I really don’t think the WSU players quit as much as they got fatigued. You guys spread all of your minutes across six players. UW rotates 9 players liberally. These kids are not machines. UW was running up and down the floor non-stop. They were pressuring from up high. This game takes a physical toll when it is played like that. With WSU lacking a deep bench, UW came into the game knowing that they were going to have a huge advantage as the game progressed.
Damn, my eyeball tastes good.
I am not worried. Stuff like this happens to teams on the road that are not top 25 teams
Look at Stanford, they lost at the uw with almost the same exact score that WSU lost, 94-61. Two days later they lost by 4 in Pullman. The next week they swept the Oregon schools at home.
CAL lost by 15 at Hec Ed and haven’t lost since. ASU lost to their rival Arizona by 19 at HOME and a week later beat Stanford by 18.
There are examples like this all over the place.
WSU is a young inconsistent team and you have to take the good with the bad.
UW West > UW East.
Watson really struggled and showed that he isn’t ready to bang on the offensive end. I would love for us to work an inside-outside game. I just don’t think we get DC the ball in a position where he has an opportunity to be a double threat, i.e. score or pass back to a shooter.
Handling adversity
or not as was the case here and in many other games this season is a mark of a young team. This is the youngest team in the NCAA Div. I this season. After watching heady kids like Low, Weav, Taylor and Baynes and Robbie lately, the perspective can get skewed. Frosh frequently play like frosh— Klay needs to learn to deal with it when the ball doesn’t go in and add other things than points… they are learning and got a severe lesson in tempo and energy needed on the road yesterday. They still look like a 10-8 PAC team to me. Go Cougs
If you can't Go Cougs... don't go.
10-8 would mean that they're 6-3 over the final nine
I sure don’t see that. I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but they’re 21 games into the season — if they haven’t figured out how to put two halves of basketball together at this point, they’re probably not going to this year. It was about this time last year that I came to grips with what that team was. It’s probably time we do the same with these guys.
Of course the team last year then decided to rip off three straight wins over tournament teams.
CougCenter WSU's second main blog
by Craig Powers on Jan 31, 2010 3:44 PM PST up reply actions
Yes, but still ended up losing in the first round of the NIT
Because they had almost no offense whatsoever.
oh, here we go with Coug fan's favorite line...
“we are sooooo young”. Pick a sport. It applies.
Damn, my eyeball tastes good.
That's a lot of talk
From a team with the same record as us in the Pac 10 and no road wins. Yes, you won yesterday. Enjoy it. And you will probably win 1 of the next two at home. But really, neither team is in a place to act arrogant at this point.
You are the one, however, minimizing its effect on this team
Its pretty obvious that it is having an effect on these guys. They lack leadership — something that’s true of Washington, too.
yeah - I saw in your link that Kentucky is even younger than WSU.
… they seem to get by.
Damn, my eyeball tastes good.
youth as an argument is dumb for two reasons:
a. you cite a stat that shows an experience disadvantage that is measured in 1/100’s of years
b. you share no evidence that shows that youth actually is a disadvantage in the sport
Our teams are what they are. On Saturday, ours beat yours because we were able to bother your top scorer, win the offensive rebounding advantage and physically run your six man rotation out of the game by the middle of the second half. When we next meet, maybe you’ll be able to assert your advantages better. Youth and/or officiating do not explain the collective performance of our squads on Sat or at any other point in the season.
Damn, my eyeball tastes good.
So, you're saying inexperience played no role in what happened in the second half?
And has played no role in this team’s inability to string together back-to-back halves of good basketball?
Look, talent will always, without a doubt, be the most important factor in determining a team’s success. But experience – which generally seems to reduce rather than exacerbate mistakes and lead to increased efficiency – can mitigate some talent issues. You can find plenty of examples of that.
I don't think it was inexperience.
… I think it was fatigue. I think WSU’s first five are as good as UW’s first five. But you only play six guys. UW rotates nine guys and they run up and down the court non-stop. You guys just got gassed.
Damn, my eyeball tastes good.
That does not makeany sense
Your supposition would be true if the uw pulled ahead at the toward end of the game. But, WSU played awful from the beginning of the second half when they were well rested.
And that's happened over and over and over and over this year
Even when they’ve played teams that also only rotate seven or eight guys, such as Cal.
Fatigue can certainly explain Saturday. But it doesn’t even come close to explaining this team’s inconsistency all year long.
Your statement can be turned around
a. you cite a stat that shows an experience disadvantage that is measured in 1/100’s of years
At least he cited a stat to back up his argument, which is more than you did.
b." you share no evidence that shows that youth actually is a disadvantage in the sport"
You show no evidence at all to back up your argument.
“Youth and/or officiating do not explain the collective performance of our squads on Sat or at any other point in the season.”
What does explain the inconsistency of both teams?
WSU recently saw first hand what experience can do. Whe Low, Weaver, etc were young and inexperienced, they lost. When they were older and experienced, they won. Now, an abundance of talent is the most important determinant of success, but all other things being equal, an experienced team will beat an inexperienced team. If you do not understand that, well, it figures.
Uh,
UK has a damn good coach and much more talented players than WSU (e.g. John Wall). Though, UK does have more upper classman than WSU, more than one.
That’s why Kentucky ‘seems to get by.’ Not hard to figure out.
Actually, he didn't prove your point
When he wrote, “much more talented players than WSU,” that should have been your first clue.
Kentucky has experienced leadership on the roster. WSU does not. The Kenpom statistic cited rates teams based on the minutes played and the experience level of those players.
Kentucky has three seniors and two juniors on their roster. Kentucky is a team that talent overcomes experience. Of course, Kentucky is one of the few teams that can recruit at their level. WSU and the uw just are not on that recruiting level.
He indicated that coaching and talent are more important than the experience stat that Nuss quoted
… which had Kentucky rated lower than WSU.
That statement is the essence of my argument.
Damn, my eyeball tastes good.
You are misconstruing what he wrote
He did not say what you are taking out of it. He is intimating teams like Kentucky are in a separate category that 99% of teams are not.
Of course, you cling to the post where Valiance was clear in what he was intending, but did not explain himself well.
Also, there is 3 one-hundredths of a difference between Kentucky and WSU, a statistical irrelevance. Next, Kentucky is not a young team. They have FIVE upperclassman on their team.
I did indicate that,
But you stated that Kentucky is one of the youngest teams in the country. They aren’t, they are just good because they have a very good coach, great talent and upper classman leadership.
Youth plays a huge roll in transitioning from High School to DI Basketball. You state that it’s not and you can’t expect to say if Syracuse reeled in a 15-man roster of freshman that were the best talent of their class would be one of the top teams in the nation. It wouldn’t work, especially in the Big East.
Even though Boeheim is a legendary coach, you could not say youth is a dumb excuse. Young players are bound to let mistakes get the best of them to ruin their game performance and that’s understandable. But, no young team is going to walk into DI Basketball as an Iron Giant.
Kentucky is great this year because of John Wall, he is their gem. I’d expect UK to be a lot different from where they are now if they didn’t have him playing at UK this year. He knows how to run an offense and how to get his players to score.
Those curious about Bennett and his Cavs
can check out their game against North Carolina on FSNW right now.
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