Washington State’s Success This Season Should Not go Unoticed

The Arizona win marked the end of a stretch of 8 straight wins the Cougars gathered during Pac-12 play. This has helped their conference record move to 12-5 if you include the most recent loss against Arizona State.

If you dive into Washington State’s season as a whole, they sit at 21-7 on the season. They had a solid non-conference showing with losses to only Mississippi State and Santa Clara. And although their start to Pac-12 play was not the best, they are 11-2 in conference play since January 10th which was on the road against the USC Trojans.

So just what and who has made Washington State this successful this season? The catalyst for the way they control the tempo of games is senior forward Isaac Jones. He leads the Cougars in both scoring and rebounding at 15.8 points per game and 7.7 rebounds per game respectively.

He has scored in double figures for 14 straight games and Washington State’s record over that time is 11-3. The rebounding efficiency out of Jones has been sensational as well with at least 4 rebounds in every game this season. This scoring production and glass-eating efficiency has led to the Cougars’ star recording 8 triple doubles this season.

Jones is not the only rebounding weapon on the team. The Cougars feature another towering forward Andrej Jakimovski who is a senior from Macedonia. He is second on the team in rebounding at 5.5 boards a game and averages double figures in points per game at 10. He played a huge role in scoring for Washington State during their 8-game win streak with double figures in 6 of those games.

The Cougars also have a big shooting threat in Jayden Wells. He is shooting 44.5% from three and has taken at least three 3-point attempts in the past ten games. In the more recent back-to-back wins Washington State had over Stanford and Arizona, Wells went a combined 9-15 from beyond the arc.

The efforts of these three players and others have the Cougars Kenpom rating at 37th overall. Their offensive efficiency mark sits at 50th in the country. It has been their defensive efficiency mark of 27th overall that has carried them up to this spot. They have held 17 of their 28 opponents to under 70 points this season. This is by no means anything exceptional, but it shows steadiness on that side of the floor that is beneficial for Washington State come March if they do indeed make it to the big dance.

This looks to come true for the Cougars as ESPN analyst Joe Lunardi has them as a 7th seed as of February 23rd. This would be huge for the program and fans in Pullman as the team has not made it to March Madness since 2008.

The 7th seed projection means a strong end to the season both in the regular season and Pac-12 tournament will really write a berth into the field of 64 in stone for the Cougars. The final three games for Washington State are all inside of the Beasley Coliseum. This includes matchups against two teams just above .500 in UCLA and in-state rival Washington as well as their next game on Thursday against the USC Trojans.

Tip-off for the game against USC is at 10:30 p.m. E.T. with coverage of the game on the Pac-12 Network.