Everett, Wash.
Published: Sunday, February 10, 2008

'Now's the time' for Cougars

Bennett's message sparks WSU, Cougs end three-game skid

By Vince Grippi
The Spokesman-Review

 PULLMAN – No blowups, no ranting, no outbursts. Despite a three-game losing streak, Washington State men's basketball coach Tony Bennett kept it under control. The Cougars fortunes, he felt, were about to change.

He was right.

And he had a big part in it. Just by keeping quiet.

Before Saturday's game with USC, the second-year head coach walked into the Cougar locker room, went straight to the white board and wrote "now's the time."

Then he turned and walked out.

The Cougars looked around, got up and started clapping.

"This might have been one of the first games where we actually got ourselves ... a little riled up to play," said senior guard Kyle Weaver.

And they took that riled-up attitude out on USC, demolishing the Trojans 74-50, before 9,136 in Beasley Coliseum and a national television audience.

In the process, the Cougars not only frustrated the Trojans' highly regarded freshmen, O.J. Mayo and Davon Jefferson, they also triggered an explosion by USC coach Tim Floyd, who was given two technicals and ejected with 4 minutes, 49 seconds to play.

But by then WSU's losing streak -- the first of the Tony Bennett era -- was history. It was snapped, in large part, by the Cougars' effort on the defensive end, described by senior forward Robbie Cowgill as "one of the better games we've played, at least in the (Pac-10)."

That defense frustrated a USC team that walked on to Friel Court having won six of their last seven games, moving into third place in the conference.

But it also starts three sophomores and two freshman, albeit one of the latter Mayo, regarded as one of the best in the nation and probably making his only appearance in Pullman.

In the Cougars' earlier 73-58 win in Los Angeles, Mayo had sliced his way to 22 points, hitting nine of 17 shots.

Saturday, under Weaver's watchful guise for 33 minutes, Mayo took 15 shots and made just six, finishing with 14 hard-earned points. It was also a play between he, Weaver and Aron Baynes that triggered Floyd's exile.

Mayo tried to split a Weaver and Baynes double team at the top of the key, stepped on the former's foot, went down and lost the ball to Cowgill.

By the time Cowgill's lob pass traveled the 50 feet down the court en route to a Weaver dunk, Floyd was 15 feet out on the court chasing down one of the officials. The ejection followed in less than a minute.

"I've never seen a coach walk out there like that without calling time out," said Weaver, who not only paced WSU with 17 points on 8-for-8 shooting, he also scored his 1,000 career point with his first basket. "That's a first. I thought he was going to choke a ref. He was a little upset."

A little?

"I watched the replay, you can all go (watch) the replay," was all Floyd would say afterward. "I can't talk about it, I would like to coach the next game."

Which is against conference-leading UCLA, whose only conference defeat was to the Trojans. The fifth-ranked Bruins, of course, handed WSU a 67-59 loss Thursday, the 17th-ranked Cougars third in a row, but also a loss Bennett used as an example of why he wasn't worried about his team.

"If the play was lousy, real lousy, if I didn't feel like we weren't taking steps in the right direction, I would have been concerned," he said, adding his team "knew they had been close, they had been knocking on the door."

"I think you have to give Washington State credit," Floyd said. "They were a team that really channeled their frustration into defense and poise tonight. They guarded us as well as we've been guarded all year."

How well? The Cougars limited USC to 36.4 percent shooting -- best since limiting Oregon to 36 percent -- and 19 points in the opening half, lowest in a Pac-10 game. They limited Jefferson to nine shots and 13 points. They forced 14 turnovers, five of them by Mayo.

And they won the battle of the boards, 25-22, only yielding six offensive rebounds and 11 second-chance points.

"That's a pretty job by us," Cowgill said of the rebounding. "That is a big part of their game and we didn't want them to get going there."

The Cougars did, though. Low joined Weaver and Taylor Rochestie (13 points) in double figures, finishing with 10 points and three assists, part of WSU's 17 on 28 baskets.
© 2009The Daily Herald Co., Everett, WA