Washington State might get the last Pac-12 laugh
An unlikely roster has beaten Arizona twice and currently holds the lead in the dying conference.
Before Klay Thompson began collecting rings, he played at Washington State, in Pullman, Wash., population 32,000, nine miles from the Idaho line.
Klay’s high school was Santa Margarita Catholic, in the milk and honey of south Orange County. How would he adjust to the wilderness?“I don’t see a problem,” said Mychal Thompson, Klay’s dad. “You got a dorm, a classroom, a basketball court and a pizza place. What else do you need?”
Klay didn’t have a problem at all. He was so prolific that Washington State retired his jersey. But the Cougars have only retired two (Steve Puidokas) and Thompson did not make an NCAA tournament. WSU got to the Finals in 1941, losing 39-34 to Wisconsin, but has been to only seven NCAAs since.
The Cougars invest fewer bucks in their program than almost anyone else in the Power Conferences, but that will end next year because the not-always-powerful Pac-12 has been partitioned and absorbed. Washington State and Oregon State will be shuttled to the Mountain West in football and the West Coast Conference in other sports, like kids being tugged by divorced parents. Neither school is well-positioned for the financial hit, and as their rivals head off the Big 10 and others join the Big 12, the whole affair just adds to their natural, little-brother resentments.
But Washington State has found a way to avoid a bad goodbye. With three weeks to go before Selection Sunday, the Cougars are leading the conference that leaves them behind.
Washington State is 21-6 overall and 12-4 in the conference. Arizona has the same conference record but, on Thursday, lost to the Cougars for the second time, 77-74. It happened at McKale Center, where Arizona had not lost all year and where more credentialed teams than Washington State have been deafened into defeat.
At the end, the Cougars’ Myles Rice missed a 3-pointer with Arizona up by three. But the rebound slipped through the hands of Oumar Ballo, who is a 260-pounder 7-footer who already had 11 rebounds, and was snatched by Andrej Jakomovski, from North Macedonia. Immediately he looked for Jaylen Wells, the prototype of the baby-faced assassin, who was in the deep left corner. Wells not only swished the 3-pointer, he got fouled by Keshad Johnson, and when he made the foul shot with :24 left, WSU led.
Arizona, laden with future pros and five-star recruits, had no answer except for two solo missions by Caleb Love, who crashed both times.
Wells had 27 points in this one. He transferred from Sonoma State. Rice has been WSU’s best player and probably the Pac-12 Newcomer of the Year, although he’s been in Pullman for three years. He was redshirted after he was recruited from Atlanta during the Covid season, and the first time coach Kyle Smith met Rice was when the plane landed. Then Rice came down with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and missed the entire 2022-23 season with chemotherapy treatments.
Isaac Jones, WSU’s best inside player, went to Idaho instead of WSU when he got out of Wenatchee Valley CC. “They outrecruited us,” Smith said, but Jones made the 10-minute trip to Pullman as a grad transfer.
Oscar Cluff is a 6-foot-11 space-eater and a surfer from Australia. His first stop was Cochise College in Arizona. When he got off the plane he took a photo of a cactus and sent it home. Washington State basically got him because Smith knew the Cochise coach, Jerry Carrillo.
Jakimovski was a four-star recruit, but decided to transfer to Loyola (Md.) when Kim Aiken announced he was coming to WSU from Eastern Washington. Aiken was planning to get a graduate degree in political science. But the department rejected him, and Aiken moved on to Arizona, and Jakimovski returned to Pullman.And Rueben Chinyalu, a 6-foot-11 rim guardian from Nigeria, got recruited when he joined the NBA Academy in Africa. He leads the Cougars in blocked shots. It’s not exactly Last Chance U., but you can see it from there.
The Cougars win because the 6-foot-3 Rice is their only starter shorter than 6-foot-8, and because they refuse to be rushed, and because they use an array of confusing defenses. They had a cushy non-league schedule and lost three of their first four league games, but they have now won 10 of 11, and the only loss was in overtime to Cal. They are 28th in the NCAA’s NET ratings, which is the current version of the old RPI. In the influential KenPom numbers, Washington State is 30th overall and 25th in defensive efficiency.
Although Pullman is a dull magnet for playing talent, it has welcomed some notable coaches. George Raveling was the first Black coach in the Pac-10. Kelvin Sampson was the coach of the Montana Tech Orediggers before he joined Len Stevens’ staff at Washington State and then followed him as the head man.
Former Wisconsin coach Dick Bennett, famous for screens, defense and scores that are more Celsius than Fahrenheit, came out of retirement to coach three years at Pullman, and brought his son Tony as an assistant. Tony took over and Washington State went from 11 wins to 26, and the Cougars got to the Final 16 in 2008.
Now there is Smith, who played at Hamilton College in New York but couldn’t get a coaching job. Just for the hell of it, he came to the U. of San Diego to help at a camp and was befriended by USD assistant Randy Bennett. When Bennett became the St. Mary’s coach, Smith joined him, and recruited a shooter from Australia named Patty Mills. That led to the Aussie pipeline that has sustained St. Mary’s as a regional power.
Smith also developed a knack for metrics, and the Cougars’ performance in practice is broken down, analyzed and used as a guide for the next game’s starting lineup. Most of all, Smith saw promise in Pullman, having put together a decent program at Columbia before he made San Francisco a factor in the WCC. And his players, having dwelled in their own degrees of obscurity, generally feel Pullman is a gateway, not a hostage situation.
It must be noted that Raveling (Iowa), Sampson (Oklahoma) and Bennett (Virginia) all high-tailed it when given an opportunity. If WSU keeps winning and stays atop the league, Smith might be named national Coach of the Year, just as Ohio State will be searching for someone new.
Smith makes $1.4 million annually at Washington State, excluding performance bonuses which, this year, could be plentiful. So there are financial realities to deal with. But Smith seems to be enjoying himself. One year he went to the coffee station at the Student Union and spent an hour giving regular students motivational speeches for exams. He has said that recruiting at WSU would be much easier “if we could keep them here for three or four days. The more time you spend here, the more you love it.”
Washington State has produced Microsoft zillionaire Paul Allen, famed football broadcaster Keith Jackson, and cartoonist Gary Larson, whose “Far Side” sketches reflect the type of cockeyed perspective that can gradually overtake you in Pullman. But the town and the school inspire a feisty pride. WSU alums are famous for sending money back to the school, and former baseball coach Bobo Brayton once recalled a player whom he had to re-recruit almost daily to keep him in town. Then it clicked, and the guy moved back to Pullman when baseball was done.
Will those who return for homecoming be able to snap photos of the 2024 Pac-12 tournament trophy? Probably. There’s nothing like a championship that you’re never asked to defend.