WSU Basketball | Cougs complete Arizona sweep 78-60

Pullman, WA – Washington State (15-7, 5-6) played their best 40 minutes of basketball Saturday evening in defeating the Arizona Wildcats (12-11, 6-5) 78-60 in front of a raucous crowd inside Beasley Coliseum.

The game featured the top two freshmen in the Pac-10 in WSU’s Reggie Moore and Arizona’s Derrick Williams. Both performed at a level belying their age once again. Williams led the ‘Cats with 16 points while Moore ran the WSU offense efficiently and scored 12 points on 3-5 shooting.

Credit the bench of WSU Coach Ken Bone with the effort necessary to earn a victory.

Senior Nik Koprivica got the start once again, but for a different reason. It wasn’t Koprivica's play of late, Abe Lodwick remained under the weather at game time leaving him unavailable.

Coach Bone was masterful in rotating players, putting them in situations where they were able to make significant contributions for the team.

Freshmen Brock Motum and Steven Bjornstad haven’t seen much court time since Pac-10 play began, but were both on the floor in the early stages of this game.

Motum responded with good play on defense and a career-high 10 points on 4-5 shooting. Bjorstad was effective on defense, including a blocked shot.

Early on Coach Sean Miller watched his Wildcats put together a nice 7-0 run to jump up on the Cougs 12-4. The rest of the game Arizona struggled to keep pace with high-energy play of Washington State who caught them at 16-16 and never trailed again the rest of the night.

The victory was achieved by outstanding team play against an Arizona team who finished the initial nine games of the conference schedule in first place.

Following the Washington loss last week, Coach Bone spoke about finding ways for both DeAngelo Casto and Klay Thompson to be successful.

Before the game, Coach Bone told Casto, “You’re the energy guy and you have to bring that energy. People naturally will feed off that. “ How right he was.

“Coach was riding me all week, we need to expand your game,” Casto said after the game.

Casto enjoyed a career-high 19 points to bookend his fine performance against the ‘Cats down in Tucson where he scored the game winning bucket with 0:00.1 left on the game clock. He also blocked 3 shots while intimidating several other attempts by Arizona shooters.

Though Thompson fell below his season average, his 14 points and game-high 4 assists seemed to be more than enough to fuel momentum for WSU. His reverse left-handed layup at the 18:29 mark of the second half put the Cougs up 37-26 and forced Coach Miller to call a timeout in the hope of slowing down Washington State.

Minutes later the ‘Cats were staging a comeback closing the margin to 40-35 in favor of WSU. Coach Bone called a timeout to set up a play, expecting Coach Miller would anticipate something for Thompson. Instead, Thompson whipped the ball over to Marcus Capers who fed a streaking Motum for an easy layup.

Cougar basketball at it’s finest.

Washington State took complete control of the game after Thompson had a breakaway opportunity and was hammered with a flagrant foul by Kyle Fogg. Klay made one of two free throws followed by Casto backing in and throwing down a nice hook to give WSU a 60-47 lead. That lead was too much for Arizona to overcome with just 7:36 left in the game.

No question about the complete Washington State effort Saturday evening. The Zzu Cru grayed out Beasley Coliseum and strongly supported the players' efforts. Vocal support meant a lot to the Cougs on Friel Court and should have been credited with an assist on the stat sheet.

Shortly after the game, Coach Bone exuded Cougar Pride.

“I’m just really excited that we won in a way that was good, solid basketball. We’ve been showing that at times during games. We’ve had moments where we’ve played well on both ends of the court. But we haven’t put together 40 minutes or 35 minutes lately. Tonight our kids did a great job defensively and offensively playing as a team. It’s nice to see them play so well when they’re trying to play as a group.” - WSU Coach Ken Bone

The Cougs have split the two conference games they’ve played each week thus far. They will look to change that record for the better next week when they travel to Northern California to take on Cal and Stanford.

Game Notes

• DeAngelo Casto finished with a career-high 19 points 
• Brock Motum scored a career-high 10 points in a career high 17 minutes…his previous highs were five points and 14 minutes done in nonconference action…Motum’s 17 minutes mark more than the minutes he’d played in the five other Pac-10 games he’s played in combined (16).
• Reggie Moore moved into a tie for third in the WSU freshman record books for assists with 98…he’s tied with Dominic Ellison (1994).
• Klay Thompson moved into a tie for 14th in the WSU career record books for 3-point field goals…he had one on the night and now has 119 in his career…is tied with Blake Pengelly (1997-2000).
• Four Cougars scored in double figures for the second-consecutive game.
• The Cougars’ 18-point victory marked their first double-figure victory in Pac-10 play this season.

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