Pushing-and-shoving Cougars turn mighty Irish into mice
DENVER -- It's becoming redundant to commence minutes-after reports on Washington State games by fawning over the team's smothering/stifling/blanketing/(insert your own synonym that ends with 'ing' here) defense, by noting its uncanny ability to lure right-minded offensive teams like Notre Dame into 40-minute slogfests.
But after the Cougars held the high-scoring, smart-shooting Fighting Irish to 19 points in the first half en route to a 61-41 win, it seems pointless to comment on much else. Simply put, so long as the Cougars continue to coax the ball into the hoop every few minutes, their defense makes them one of the tourney's most harrowing matchups.
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| Cougars like Robbie Cowgill make it a long, hard night for Luke Harangody. (AP) |
The Cougars alternately bullied and bludgeoned Big East Player of the Year Luke Harangody into his worst shooting performance of the season, holding him to 10 points on 3-of-17 shooting from the field. As a team, the Fighting Irish shot 24.5 percent from the field. Until running into the Washington State defense, they hadn't been held below 64 points all season.
"I kind of feel like I let the guys down," Harangody said. Ryan Ayers, held scoreless in 20 minutes, added, "It was tough because we're used to putting up big numbers."
Harangody, who has spurred a rush on bull-in-china-shop analogies with his steamroller attitude towards low-post defenders, was clearly frustrated by the attention from Washington State forward Robbie Cowgill and the occasional jostle from fellow big men Caleb Forest and Aron Baynes. Whereas most of Notre Dame's foes relented in the face of Harangody's approaches/assaults -- indeed, this is the reaction of most sane human beings to a brick wall flying in one's immediate direction -- Washington State held its ground. Towards the end of the second half, Harangody took to shepherding the ball down the court himself on several occasions, resulting in some of the less graceful ballhandling in recent memory.
Cougars coach Tony Bennett credited his defenders for following a defensive blueprint to perfection. "There were times when we didn't trap, just to throw a different look at (Harangody)," he noted. "Our guys really pinched the gaps, stayed down, made him make shots over the top."
The game had the feel of a Washington State rout from the outset, with the refs allowing plenty of contact in the first half (before backsliding into touch-foul mode in the second) and Notre Dame arching its share of shots from, uh, "creative" angles. While the Fighting Irish closed within seven points after a 9-0 run early in the second half, they never got closer than that. The mini-run was quickly countered by a Washington State scoring spurt of its own, pushing the lead into double-digits to stay. Before too long, Notre Dame seemed resigned to its fate, heaving up shots carelessly.
"The knockout punch came early," said Notre Dame coach Mike Brey, who probably could've thought of happier ways to celebrate his 49th birthday. "I loved the fact that we fought back ... But boy, you know, it was a big hole to get out of because of (Washington State's) style."
The Cougars weren't especially efficient on offense, shooting 44 percent from the field and only 24 percent from behind the arc -- but then, they didn't have to be. With Baynes (six points on 2-for-7 shooting) and Taylor Rochestie (six points on 2-for-8 shooting) misfiring from near and far, respectively, senior forward Kyle Weaver (15 points) picked up the slack with one of his finest offensive games of the season.
"I'm an all-purpose guy for this team. I'm depended on to score, rebound and usually defend the opposing team's best player. Today I was able to do all of those things," Weaver said.
Derrick Low, held scoreless in the first half of the Cougars' opening-round win over Winthrop, didn't wait until the 20-minute mark to get started this time. He scored 11 points in the first half and finished with 18, pinballing around the perimeter as if massively overcaffeinated.
As for the possibility of running up against a high-octane offense in Charlotte next weekend, the Cougars are unfazed. "We think we can run with anybody or play any style of basketball to win a game," Weaver said. Rochestie put it even more succinctly: "Our defense is our offense." Eastern regionalists, you've been forewarned.
