Washington State Basketball GameDay Huddle: Utah Valley

The Washington State men’s basketball team will host Utah Valley tonight as part of the CBE preseason tournament at Friel Court in Beasley Coliseum. The Cougs got off to a terrific start on Saturday, trouncing the Eastern Washington Eagles behind Brock Motum’s 23 by a score of 88-69 to improve to a perfect 43-0 in the month of November since Friel became their home. This is the first time UVU and WSU will have gotten together.

After the game tonight, Washington State will get set for a much tougher 3 game run on the road, going to Pepperdine and then taking on Kansas and either St. Louis or Texas A&M in another 2 game tourney. So I imagine Ken Bone and staff will try and clean anything they have seen thus far from the exhibition and opening games up tonight, because there will be very little room for error if the Cougs are to even take a 1-2 from that stretch, and even less if they are to emerge at 4-1 or an unlikely 5-0.

Although the offense clicked well against EWU, the Cougars still haven’t settled on a good PG rotation, and the Mike Ladd/DaVonte Lacy combo still needs time to gel and establish their role as dangerous scorers. I don’t think that can happen in a game like tonight’s, but more foundation can be laid. I would also like to see freshman Brett Boese get some attention with floor time and confidence, as I have a feeling he’ll be needed big time in games coming soon. Junior Longrus and Dominic Ballard need more experience as well.

Go Cougs!