Washington State Basketball: The Future Part Two
Dec 21, 2012; Seattle, WA, USA; Washington State Cougars guard Royce Woolridge (22) drives to the basket past Buffalo Bulls forward Raphell Thomas-Edwards (0) during the 1st half at KeyArena. Mandatory Credit: Steven Bisig-USA TODAY Sports
This is the second part of my three part series of “The Future”, where I go over the future state of our beloved Cougar basketball team. You can find the 1st part here, The Future Part 1.
This whole season Ken Bone has been under fire from the fans, and many believe that Moos needs to kick Bone to the curb. He hasn’t done much to help his cause this season either, with an early loss to lowly Pepperdine, and currently on an 8 game skid, this is by far, the most disappointing season in his career at Washington State.
Bone made his way to the Cougs from Portland State, where he had just come off of two straight seasons of getting them to the NCAA tournament. Despite his impressive resume, Bone came to WSU with an uphill battle. He had to fill the shoes of Tony Bennett, who led us to a sweet 16 birth in the 07-08 season, and was deemed the savior of WSU basketball. Bone not only faced the challenge of continuing the winning ways of what Bennett had established, but he was also bringing in the complete opposite offense; Bennett ball was the slow paced, use-all-the-shot-clock offense, and Bone brought the get-out-and-run, fast paced offense. With the complete 180 in offensive scheme and a roster full of Bennett’s players, Bone’s challenge was going to be difficult from day 1.
Ken Bone’s time here at WSU has been anything but great. In his 3 and 3/4 seasons at Wazzu, he has a 68-63 record, and a conference record of 24-45 (ouch). His inability to win close games in Pac 12 play has been Bone’s biggest crutch, leading to that poor conference record, and his appearances in the NIT, and CBI tournaments, instead of the Big Dance.
Bone took over a team that was built to slow the game down, not speed it up, but putting that aside he took over a talented team, that could have easily made it to the dance. That underachieving has made it especially hard to watch, and is probably the reason a lot of fans are calling for his job. He hasn’t helped himself either in terms of recruiting and the direction he’s taken this program.
Recruiting has been a big problem for me and a lot of other fans. Early on in the first two years, he never filled any needs, or to be honest never filled the roster with a whole lot of skill either. His direction of the program has been a big mystery to me too, and had me thinking, “what kind of team is he really building here?”
Maybe there is hope on the horizon though.
Look forward to the third and final part of this mini-series tomorrow, as I go into some big differences between this years’ team and next.