Coming off narrow win over San Diego, WSU looks to build better habits with home matchup agianst Portland

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Jan. 18—PULLMAN — This may be David Riley’s first year as Washington State’s head coach, but it’s hardly his first rodeo in the region. A Seattle native, he spent the first decade-plus of his coaching career at Eastern Washington, giving him some awareness of WSU throughout the years.

That provided Riley with chances to check out Cougars teams led by former coach Tony Bennett, who has always hung his hat on defense. Years later, as Riley guides WSU through its first year of West Coast Conference membership, he still remembers watching the Bennett teams. He wants to instill in this WSU team some of what Bennett did in his.

“They were gonna play their defense and their style no matter what,” Riley said. “They weren’t gonna change it up, and I think we do that offensively. I gotta get a little better defensively, of just trusting our stuff and when we do it, we showed in the second half, we can be pretty dang good.”

Riley was referencing the second half of the Cougars’ 65-61 road win over San Diego on Thursday night, which helped WSU end a two-game skid. That sets the stage for the Cougars’ next game, at home against struggling Portland at 3 p.m. Saturday, and the improvements Riley and WSU will look to make.

It’s the second matchup of the season for the Pilots and Cougars, who earned an 89-73 road win to open WCC play in late December. Since then, Portland (6-13, 1-5) has lost four of five games, ending a four-game losing streak with an overtime win over Pacific on Thursday. WSU (14-5, 4-2) is trying to get back on track after back-to-back setbacks to Pacific and Gonzaga last week.

With a narrow win over San Diego, the Cougars made the first step in that direction, just not in a convincing way. After bolting to an 18-2 start , WSU allowed USD back in the game and then some, watching the Toreros open up a lead as wide as six. It was a struggle all night for WSU, which was held to its lowest point total in a victory this season. Guard Nate Calmese came through with five…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/coming-off-narrow-win-over-160200509.html

Author : The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.

Publish date : 2025-01-18 16:02:00

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