Washington State got down big early, but almost came back in San Diego against the Toreros, eventually falling 95-92. This was the Cougs fourth straight losses, falling five games below .500 for the second time this season, with an overall record of 8-13.<\/p>\n
WSU came out sluggish and disinterred. Four minutes in, the Cougs had three turnovers and conceded five offensive rebounds to San Diego. The Cougs were getting killed on the glass for much of the game. San Diego ended up shooting 7 more field goals than WSU, and for many parts of the game it was worse.<\/p>\n
Ace Glass awoke late in the first half and the Cougars went on 10-0 run cutting the lead to 8, but ultimately trailed by 1o going into the half, 32-42. They trailed by as much as 18 in the first half.<\/p>\n
Washington State was great in the second half on offense, scoring 60 points (they scored 32 in the first). Early in the half WSU made an emphasis to get the ball inside, with two straight buckets for ND Okafor. ND finished with 21 on 8-10 shooting (he also went 5-6 from the free throw line!).<\/p>\n
WSU hung around the 8-10 point deficit for most of the half. 22 in the second half for San Diego\u2019s Ty-Laur Johnson, but Ace Glass matched him, finishing with 29.<\/p>\n
For as good as the Cougs were on offense, the defense was equally as bad. It was a season high in threes for SD, who finished 15-28 from behind the arc, 54%. Vuk Boskovic went 4-6 from deep, he hadn\u2019t made more than two this season. Gavin Ripp hit what was essentially the dagger for the Toreros, had only made two career threes.<\/p>\n
Washington State made a late push, pressing and playing the foul game, getting the score to 94-92 with 7 seconds remaining. But ultimately it was too little to late, in a season-summing loss.<\/p>\n
This team looked like it was turning a corner, but than Tomas Thrastarson went out with an injury and the defense has regressed to where it was early in the season. After the last game of the Maui Invitational, WSU didn\u2019t concede more than 80 points to an opponent for ten straight games. But since the competition stepped back up, and even against a lesser opponents tonight, the defensive woes are back. WSU has allowed: 88,86,85, and 96 in their last four games, wasting three solid offensive performances.<\/p>\n
Tonight was a really startling loss from where the Cougars were two years ago. WSU is less than two full seasons removed from an NCAA tournament birth, tonight they fell to 3-5 in WCC play. The listed attendance for tonights game was 855.<\/p>\n
WSU will look to steady themselves against Pepperdine at home this Saturday January 24th, at 3pm on ESPN+.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Washington State got down big early, but almost came back in San Diego against the Toreros, eventually falling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75,72216],"class_list":["post-144333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-wsu-cougars-mens-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}