Pregaming – Washington State

Teams: Oklahoma State (20-13, 6-10) vs. Washington State (20-12, 9-9)

For entertainment purposes
OSU travels to Pullman for a 2nd round affair with the Cougs at 10:30 (!) CST. The game will be on ESPN2 and ESPN3. OSU is currently ranked #61 in RPI while Washington State is at #82. WSU is favored by 6.5.

The 6.5 spread seems a little high to me, especially considering WSU dropped 3 of their last 6 at home in the regular season.

Behind enemy lines
Coug Center which might be the strangest name for a blog I’ve ever heard. Not that I’m in a real position of leverage to be judging other blog names.

Homework
Washington State owes the Cowboys one since the only time they met resulted in an 81-29 mauling at the hands of John Lucas and the Graham brothers in Stillwater. I attended that game and it was about 50x worse than the final score indicates. OSU could have put up 120 if they wanted to. I also have a feeling we will not be seeing a repeat of that tonight.

Klay Thompson (son of Mychal Thompson) led the Pac-10 in scoring this year and the Cougars come in averaging 73.5 a game (3rd in the conference). They barely lost to then-#5 Kansas State at home and beat then-#15 Baylor (that feels like forever ago) in Hawaii. The Cougs beat Long Beach State in their 1st round NIT matchup last week, 85-74 (Thompson had 25).

OSU will win if…
If they can hold Thompson under 20 I think they’re going to win. He’s what amounts to a little thicker, shorter version of Tayshaun Prince and I have no clue who OSU has that can guard him. JPO isn’t tall enough and none of our bigs, short as they are, are quick enough to hang with him. He’s going to be a nightmare. But as has been the case for the last month, if Pilgrim shows up OSU can play with anyone on any court. Even if they haven’t won a road game in 2011.

What I’m worried about
The idea of having Northwestern at home (probably on Wednesday) to go to the NIT Final Four is extremely enticing (especially since we’re undefeated against purple teams in GIA this year!). So much thought that I can’t imagine the Cowboys wouldn’t be looking ahead. I’m also a little worried that so many of the OSU guys actually enjoyed this movie.

Two random stats that (probably) only interest me: