June Daugherty and Donnie Marbut conducted their weekly press conferences Tuesday and we have video from both. Ken Bone also conducted his weekly press conference although there is no video, clearly a conspiracy.

June Daugherty Press Conference 2/21 (via WSUCougarAthletics)

Donnie Marbut Press Conference 2/21 (via WSUCougarAthletics)

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Today answers a very important question. What do I put in this space when there is virtually no news and barely enough links to justify a post? The answer is a WSU athletics event schedule for the rest of the week!

Wednesday

• Swimming at Pac-12 Championships

Thursday

• Swimming at Pac-12 Championships

Friday

• Tennis vs. BYU - 12:00 p.m
• Baseball vs. Nebraska Omaha - 2:00 p.m.
• Baseball vs. Nebraska Omaha - 5:30 p.m.
• Track & Field at MPSF Championships
• Swimming at Pac-12 Championships

Saturday

• Baseball vs. Nebraska Omaha - 12:00 p.m.
• Men's basketball vs. Washington - 5:00 p.m.
• Track & Field at MPSF Championships
• Swimming at Pac-12 Championships

Sunday

• Baseball vs. Nebraska Omaha - 12:00 p.m.
• Women's basketball at Washington - 12:00 p.m.
• Swimming at Pac-12 Championships

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We all know Reggie Moore has a lot of basketball skill. He can pass, he can dribble, he can drive, he can even shoot. Having watched him play for three years, none of that comes as a surprise. Moore, however, has one other skill that has largely gone unnoticed and unappreciated.

Reggie Moore is an elite starer.

Don't believe me? Check out the video below where Moore puts on a staring performance few can equal. The clip is slowed to half speed, but you can watch the original 14 second clip here.

Talk about impressive. You may have noticed, before Moore blinks once, Brock Motum blinks three times! Then again, Australians have never been competitive in the world staring championships.

Let's take a closer look at Moore's technique. Now, I never competed or coached staring at the high school or college level so some of you may dismiss my opinion, but Moore's skills are so evident anyone can see them.

The first thing you notice is Moore's perfect execution of the "wide-eyed" technique. Staring competition referees are known to be even worse than Pac-12 referees so you don't want to give them a chance to flag you for a squinting. During the entire performance, Moore's eyes never strain, it doesn't even look like he's trying!

Next, you notice the extreme focus. Moore is not distracted by people talking or moving in the room. He's able to shift his eye focus without hesitation, a skill only the great ones possess. Moore is so focused, not even Motum's ill-fitting shirt can distract him.

Where Moore really separates himself is his ability to overcome all obstacles. You'll notice early on, Moore fights off a hiccup/burp without problem. Involuntary bodily functions are known to be the greatest challenge to the sport of staring. A lot of great competitors have been done in by a sneeze. Moore appears to have great body control and it appears the only person who can beat Reggie Moore at staring is Reggie Moore.

If there was a staring ranking site similar to Scout.com, there is no question Moore would be ranked as a five-star prospect. He has all of the skills you look for in a prospect, it's really amazing to watch greatness of this level.

Currently, staring is not an official event in the Summer Olympics, but jumping on a trampoline is so it's obvious the high demand for staring contests will lead to it's inclusion possibly as soon as the 2016 Summer Olympics. Moore has one more season of basketball eligibility, but I would not be surprised to see him go the route of Jeshua Anderson and leave basketball to instead focus on training for the world staring championships.

While we all currently watch him on FSN, it won't be long until Moore is a mainstay on ESPN 8 The Ocho.

While Brock Motum probably won't win Pac-12 player of the year, even if he should, his strong season has virtually guaranteed him a spot on the Pac-12 first team. Washington State doesn't have the most storied history when it comes to all-conference selections, which leads us to today's two trivia questions.

Q1: Who was the last WSU forward or center to be named to the Pac-12* first team?

Q2: Since 1916, how many total all-conference selections has WSU had? This includes first, second and third team selections.

*Or whatever the conference was being called at the time.

Current Standings

Blackie1829 - 87

Wazzu-Hondo - 80

SoCalCoug - 78

Craig - 60

BigWood - 55

Coug999 - 43

Nusser - 40

Neil Vincent Roberts - 34

WazzuCrew11 - 25

B-lot tailgater - 24

Bearcat44 - 20

Cougdude50 - 15

LeaveItToWeaver - 15

Johnnycougar - 13

Tinit -10

Rancourt - 10

BleedCrimson - 10

02Coug - 10

cfred - 10

wsubigdeal - 10

Shellin - 10

sdcoug09 - 10

-Tag - 10

t-line_coug - 5

Rochestie4ever - 5

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As I quickly wrote the recap of yesterday's game, I tried to cover as many points as possible. Since then, I realized I left out quite a bit. I'll cover a few of those things, with videos below that and the other links after the jump.

• After thinking about it and looking through old game logs, I think that may have been the best game of Marcus Capers' WSU career. Nine points, 10 rebounds and seven assists won't win any player of the week honors, but when you factor in Capers' role on the team, that is about as much as you can ask for.
• I glossed over it in the recap, but the three-pointer Patrick Simon hit with 12:59 to play had to be the biggest shot of the game. At the time, ASU was on a 9-0 run and had cut the lead to 12. Capers broke the press and found Simon early in the shot clock. A miss could lead to a long rebound and numbers for ASU. I'm not saying if Simon missed WSU would have lost, but for a guy who hadn't played in the previous three games to take and hit that shot was impressive.
• Late in the second half, Dexter Kernich-Drew was fouled while shooting a three-point shot. Is it just me or have WSU shooters been fouled on threes an inordinate number of times this season. The WSU postgame notes say it was the third four-point play of the season and that doesn't include at least three other fouls on three-point shots that didn't result in a four-point play. I'm not sure it happened once last season.
• Reggie Moore's three assists may not pop off the stat sheet, but his zero turnovers do. It's the second time this season Moore has finished a game with zero turnovers and the 11th time in 15 Pac-12 games he has had two or less. Moore now has a very shiny 3:1 assist to turnover ratio in Pac-12 play.

MBB: Cougs pound ASU! 2/18 (via WSUCougarAthletics)

MBB: Postgame Sound! 2/18 (via WSUCougarAthletics)

MBB: Bone Postgame! 2/18 (via WSUCougarAthletics)

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Behind a dominating first half performance, Washington State knocked off Arizona State 72-50.

WSU started the game on a 10-0 run and eventually stretched the lead to 28 points leading 36-8 at halftime. The halftime stats were rather comical as you can see here. ASU used an aggressive full-court pressure defense to make a run in the second half cutting the WSU lead to 12 before a 7-0 WSU run put the game away for good.

DaVonte Lacy led the way for the Cougars scoring 17 points including 14 in the first half. Lacy missed his first three 3-point shots before connecting on four of his final six attempts. It was a bit of a slump busting game for Lacy who had scored in double figures in just one of his past five games.

Pac-12 player of the year contender Brock Motum clearly suffered from the Nusser jinx scoring 16 points while grabbing just one rebound. Motum was still effective, shooting 5-9 from the floor. Motum also got back on track at the free throw line making 5-6 after missing six crucial free throws against Arizona.

Marcus Capers stuffed the stat sheet leading the Cougars with 10 rebounds and a career high 7 assists. Capers may have been at his best when the Cougars needed it the most dishing out two assists after ASU cut the lead to 12. Capers first found Patrick Simon for a three, then after D.J. Shelton drew a charge, Capers broke the ASU press and found Shelton for a thundering two-handed slam.

While the 22-point win looks great, WSU was far from a perfect game. They struggled against ASU's press defense, twice failing to inbound the ball before drawing a five second call. The Cougars move to 14-13 this season and 6-9 in conference, temporarily moving ahead of Oregon State for eighth place.

Washington State will return to Beasley Colliseum next Saturday to face Washington at 8 p.m. The game will represent senior night with Capers, Abe Lodwick, Charlie Enquist and Faisal Aden partaking in the festivities.

I gotta be honest: I smell a blowout.

Despite the Cougs now having lost five of seven, WSU is playing as well offensively as they have all season. The defense still has yet to come around, but I think it's been better -- even if the results don't seem to show it after giving up greater than 1.10 points per possession in the last three games. It seems like they play a lot of solid possessions that are eventually done in by one critical breakdown.

I think the increased defensive intensity prevents a repeat of ASU's hot shooting performance in Tempe, and we already know that the Sun Devils' 7-foot sloths have no chance of staying with Pac-12 Player of the Year Brock Motum.

The game can be found on Root/FSN for your viewing pleasure, and if you're unable to get to a TV, you can listen to the game on the KTTH radio feed at mynorthwest.com. If there are any video streaming options, those will be posted in the comments.

So, I was watching Arizona and Washington today and marveling at how the Wildcats seemed to mysteriously miss not just good looks from three, but wide, wide open looks. I thought to myself, "Dang, it seems like every team hits all of those against WSU."

Such a thought in my mind never goes unchallenged, so I cruised over to Statsheet.com to check out how teams actually have shot from three against WSU. I sorted their games from highest three-point percentage against to lowest, and discovered something that might mean something, and might mean nothing.

The Cougs' record against teams who shoot well from three against them is really, really bad. For example, when teams shoot above 38 percent from three against them, the Cougs are 0-11. Made sense to me: It seems like when teams hit their shots against WSU they lose, and when they miss them WSU wins. I threw it out there on Twitter as something interesting, and a few people said, "Well, that happens to everyone -- or something close to it."

Which got me thinking. Is that true?

So I went and looked at the rest of the Pac-12 and how dramatically their won-loss record was impacted (or not) by opponent three-point percentage. Of course teams are going to lose more when their opponents shoot well -- duh. So, I decided to see what the difference was in winning percentage when a team allows above a certain shooting percentage from three and when they allow below that certain percentage. If it's really as simple as some of those people on Twitter made it sound, then everyone should have a similar difference between their winning percentages, right?

One more note on methodology. I needed to set a threshold for "good/bad shooting day from three." I didn't stick with 38 percent because that just seemed too arbitrary to me -- obviously, that cutoff would favor my case. So I went to kenpom.com to see what the average three-point percentage is across Division I and found it to be 34.3. I set my line there.

Here's how Pac-12 teams rank by that difference in winning percentage:

Now, this is highly unscientific -- and there are probably any number of you that could come up with a better way to try and quantify this -- but this quick-and-dirty investigation seems to suggest that the Cougars' ability to win ball games is impacted by their opponents' three-point percentage to a higher degree than their peers in the Pac-12. WSU has the worst margin -- 9 percent worse than anyone other than UCLA -- and only ASU and Utah have worse winning percentages when opponents have an above-average three-point shooting game against them.

What does it mean? We already know, via kenpom.com, that the correlation between effective field goal defense and the Cougs' defensive efficiency is plus-0.88. Perhaps WSU's opponent eFG% is driven more by threes than other teams? Obviously, there are other factors that can impact how dramatic of an effect shooting has on defensive efficiency -- the fact that the Cougs aren't particularly strong at taking the ball away or securing defensive rebounds probably makes them more vulnerable to the vagaries of shooting percentages, as they're unable to overcome the randomness in other ways.

I also find their very good winning percentage on opponents' below-average shooting days interesting, too. Given that the Cougs have the 48th rated offense in adjusted efficiency, this reinforces the idea that the offense is good enough consistently enough to take advantage and win a game when opponents miss some shots. In which case, the take away is GOSH DARN IT I WISH THE DEFENSE WAS JUST A LITTLE BIT BETTER AND WE'D ALL BE A LOT HAPPIER.

But honestly? I'm not going to pretend to know exactly what it means. Maybe something? Maybe nothing?

I'm actually curious about your thoughts. Fire away.