Feb the 10th
of 2018 / WSU Track & Field
Keefe and
Korir Run WSU Top Five Mile Times in Seattle
From WSU
Sports Info
SEATTLE --
The Washington State track and field competitors had another highly successful
day at the Husky Classic at the Dempsey Indoor Facility in Seattle.
In the
women's premier sections of the mile, Kaili Keefe (sophomore, Yakima, Wash.)
and Vallery Korir (senior, Iten, Kenya) clocked in PR times that landed in the
WSU history top five. Keefe, a January transfer from Eastern Washington
University, won her heat and was 25th overall in a time of 4 minutes 47.37
seconds, fourth-best all-time, while Korir's time of 4:49.84 is fifth-best in
WSU records. Friday night Korir ran the school record time of 16:07.72 in the
5000m.
In the
men's mile, Justin Janke (sophomore, Spokane) and Paul Ryan (redshirt
sophomore, Moscow, Idaho) reached PRs of 4:05.99 and 4:06.01, respectively.
A trio of
WSU women reached PRs in the 800m with Marlow Schulz (senior, Whitefish, Mont.)
finishing in 16th place with a time of 2:10.13 and Zorana Grujic (freshman,
Novi Sad, Serbia) was 18th with a time of 2:10.77. Natalie Ackerley's 2:12.75
was 31st.
Colton
Johnsen (sophomore, Bellingham, Wash.) finished 36th in the 3000m with a PR
time of 8:07.06, chopping 10 seconds off his previous best. Chandler Teigen
(junior, Anatone, Wash.) was 44th with a time of 8:10.53, just off his PR of
8:10.08. Kyler Little (junior, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho) ran a 15-seconds improved
PR time of 8:16.74 for 57th out of the 101 runners in the premier sections.
Devon
Bortfeld ran her first 3000m of the season with a time of 9:32.26 for 33rd.
In the
men's high jump, Keelan Halligan (junior, Bothell, Wash.) and Peyton
Fredrickson (junior, Ridgefield, Wash.) tied for fifth place when both cleared
6-feet 9 inches (2.06m), a season-best for Halligan and a lifetime-best for
Fredrickson.
ALBUQUERQUE
-- At the University of New Mexico Don Kirby Invitational at the Albuquerque
Convention Center Saturday, several Cougars achieved marks close to their PRs
with season-bests.
Multi-events
competitor Alissa Brooks-Johnson (redshirt senior, Doty, Wash.) ran back-to-back
PRs in the 60m hurdles with a time of 8.55 seconds in the semifinals and a time
of 8.50 for seventh place in the final. Christapherson Grant (junior, Lynnwood,
Wash.) ran a season-best time of 8.08 in the men's 60m hurdles for fourth place
in the final with Nick Johnson sixth with a time of 8.10.
For the
second consecutive week, Greer Alsop triple jumped a season-best distance of
40-feet 3 1/2 inches (12.28m).
THEY SAID:
Wayne
Phipps, WSU Director of Cross Country/Track & Field, said, "We had a
number of outstanding performances led by our milers and in particular our
female milers Kaili and Vallery who ran the fourth and fifth fastest times in
WSU history. Making it even more impressive was that Vallery doubled back after
her school record in the 5k. Newcomer Colton Johnsen was also impressive with
another huge personal best in the 3k."
Kaili
Keefe earned two entries into the WSU top 5 all-time marks in the DMR and the
mile this weekend said, "The DMR definitely set me up nicely for today. We
had a good race last night and I think that helped set the mood for today. I
was worried how I'd feel doubling but I think things just fell in place and Val
and I worked a lot together throughout the race which helped a lot."
NOTEWORTHY:
Between the two meets this weekend, the WSU
men tallied 13 PRs and four season-best marks while the WSU women had 11 PRs
and three season-bests.
Three current Cougars are in the WSU
all-time top 10 women's mile standings: Kaili Keefe fourth (4:47.37), Vallery
Korir fifth (4:49.84), and Devon Bortfeld seventh (4:50.96). The record time of
4:43.71 was run indoors by Abby Regan in 2015 in Seattle, where all the current
Cougs ran their times.
WSU
student coach CJ Allen, running unattached, finished fourth in the men's 400m
dash with a time of 47.33, well under the USATF Indoor Championships (Feb.
16-18 in Albuquerque) standard of 47.40.
The Cougars next competition will be at the
Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships, Feb. 23-24, at the Dempsey
Indoor Facility in Seattle.
////////////
Women’s
Basketball
Back to
Business, Cougs to Host No. 9/10 Oregon Sunday
February
10, 2018 / Women's Basketball
Back to
Business, Cougs to Host No. 9/10 Oregon Sunday
The Cougs
will attempt to slow the Pac-12's top offense.
From WSU
Sports Info
#9/10
OREGON (22-4, 11-2) vs WASHINGTON ST. (10-15, 3-10)
1 p.m. |
Sunday | Feb. 11, 2018
Pullman,
Wash. | Beasley Coliseum (11,671)
MATCHUP
NOTES
The Cougs
continue at home with a matchup with the Pac-12's top team, #9/10 Oregon Sunday
at Beasley Coliseum. WSU started the Pac-12 season in Eugene against the Ducks
as Oregon took the 89-56 victory over the Cougs. However, WSU was without
Borislava Hristova for the game as the Cougs' leading scorer sat out the
weekend with an ankle injury. The matchup will feature the top two scorers in
the Pac-12 as Sabrina Ionescu leads the conference at just under 20 ppg while
Hristova sits right behind the Duck sophomore at 18.7 ppg. All-time the Ducks
lead the series at 65-19 and are 29-9 in Pullman.
LAST TIME
OUT
With the
game on the line and down one with :17 seconds to play, Borislava Hristova got
the step on her defender, crashing to the rim for what looked like the
game-winning layup and the foul against the No. 16/16 ranked Oregon State
Beavers at Beasley Coliseum Friday night. However, the magic ending for
Washington State (10-15, 3-10 Pac-12) was not to be as the Beavers (18-6, 9-4
Pac-12) Katie McWilliams saved the night for OSU with a tip-in of a Marie
Gulich pass with :02 to play in regulation, sending the contest into overtime.
McWilliams would play the hero in the extra period when she hit a pair of free
throws with :01.1 to play after a controversial call sent the Beaver junior to
the line. The Cougs had stormed back from six points down with just one minute
to play in the overtime period, tying the game with a free throw with :02 to
play by Maria Kostourkova. WSU was able to get back into the game late in
overtime thanks to a pair of clutch three-pointers by Hristova and Pinelopi
Pavlopoulou, the last of which came with just :12 seconds to play. Hristova
would end the game with 21 points scoring 12 in the fourth quarter and overtime
after the Beavers had taken control of the game.
ABOUT THE
DUCKS
The top
offense in the Pac-12, the high-powered Ducks enter the game in a three-way tie
at the top of the standings at 11-2 in Pac-12 play while sporting the best
overall record at 22-4. Ranked #9/10 in the polls, the Ducks are the
second-highest ranked team in the conference slotting just behind #8/7
UCLA after falling to Stanford last week
in Eugene. The Ducks got back on track with a 76-63 win over Washington Friday
night in Seattle led by a 30 point, 14 rebound performance out of Ruthy Hebard.
Overall, the Ducks are led by Sabrina Ionescu, the conference's leading scorer
at 19.5 points per game while Hebard sits just behind her at 17.3 ppg and 8.5
rpg. The Ducks average 83 ppg, 12th best in the country.
IN THE
TWITTERVERSE FOLLOW THE COUGS ON SOCIAL MEDIA ALL SEASON LONG
Get all
the info, photos, and videos a true Coug Fan could want by following the team
on Facebook (facebook.com/wsuwomenshoops), Twitter (@WSUWomensHoops) and
Instagram (WSUWomensHoops).
//////
Men;s
Basketball
Coming off
32-point loss, Washington State takes six-game skid, depleted roster to Eugene
UPDATED:
Sat., Feb. 10, 2018, 5:23 p.m.
By Theo
Lawson Spokane S-R
EUGENE –
During the early, promising stages of the 2017-18 Washington State season that
feel almost prehistoric at this point, the Cougars managed to fend off one of
the college basketball programs their head coach presided over long before his
career arrived in Pullman.
An 84-79
upset win over Saint Mary’s at the Wooden Legacy tournament was – and still is,
perhaps with the exception of the title win that followed – the high point of
Ernie Kent’s fourth season with the Cougars.
When WSU
returned from Fullerton, California, with the Wooden Legacy trophy, its fans
expected an encore. Instead, the Cougars have lost 14 of their next 17 games,
leading up to Sunday’s Pac-12 contest against the Oregon Ducks (16-8, 6-5) –
the second encounter of the season between Kent and a former employer.
It might
require the high point of Kent’s WSU career to pull this one off.
Winless in
games played in the state of Oregon since Kent took over in 2014, the Cougars
(9-14, 1-10) are coming off a 92-64 blowout loss to a 10th-place Oregon State
team that had lost its previous four contests before throttling WSU in
Corvallis on Thursday. Thirty-two points represent the largest margin of defeat
for the Cougars this season and matched the third-largest margin of defeat of
the Kent era in Pullman.
OSU was
only supposed to represent a warm-up for WSU heading into Sunday’s test in
Eugene. A Final Four team in 2017 that lost four starters – three of whom now
have prominent roles on NBA teams – Oregon faces an uphill battle if it wishes
to qualify for the NCAA Tournament for the seventh time in seven years under
Dana Altman, the man who replaced Kent in 2010.
The Ducks
were trounced by Stanford 96-61 two games ago – a game Altman considered the
worst of his UO tenure – but followed up with a defensive masterpiece against a
Washington team that had entered with four consecutive wins. Oregon beat the
Huskies 65-40, allowing the visitors to shoot just 15 of 54 (27 percent) from
the field.
Sophomore
point guard Payton Pritchard, the only returning starter, paces Oregon at 14.3
points per game and is Altman’s assists leader at 112. New Mexico grad transfer
Elijah Brown, the son of Golden State Warriors assistant Mike Brown, scores
13.1 ppg, and former five-star recruit Troy Brown gives the Ducks another 12.1.
The
Cougars head to Eugene with a depleted roster and getting through Sunday’s game
without enduring more injury is just as essential as competing in it.
In
Thursday’s game at Oregon State, 3-point specialist Carter Skaggs suffered an
ankle injury that precluded him from finishing the second half. Kent couldn’t
speak to the severity of the injury afterward. Additionally, guard Milan
Acquaah missed the game with an injury and Drick Bernstine played limited
minutes because of a nagging knee problem.
A lineup
that included reserves Arinze Chidom, Steven Shpreyregin and Davante Cooper
gave the Cougars an offensive surge against OSU. Kent said he’d reward the unit
with extended minutes against the Ducks.
“I was
proud of that group that was on the floor that doesn’t get a lot of chance to
play,” Kent said. “They’re going to play a lot more because they battled. They
battled hard. … I think our depth is good.”
Kent won
235 games in his 13 seasons at Oregon. Although he’s been back to Matthew
Knight Arena multiple times as an enemy, the WSU coach said he still expects
his emotions to run high.
“I spent
almost half of my adult life in Oregon and from the perspective of going to
school, living there, leaving, coming back, working, leaving there again,” Kent
said. “That’s a lot of time and my kids are all in Oregon, my granddaughter’s
in Oregon. Anytime you have those kind of connections … there’s going to be
some emotion there.”
////////////
Oregon
Men's Basketball
As Ernie
Kent prepares for Oregon, he hopes WSU's Malachi Flynn is on same trajectory as
Luke Ridnour, Aaron Brooks and other point guards he coached with the Ducks
By Steve
Mims
Eugene
Register-Guard
Feb. 10,
2018
After
starting Malachi Flynn during the first 51 games of his career, Washington
State coach Ernie Kent benched his sophomore point guard last week at Arizona.
In a
reserve role, Flynn had his first double-double for the Cougars with 11 points
and 11 assists in a 100-72 loss to the Wildcats. That earned Flynn a return to
the starting lineup four days later against Arizona State, and he’s expected to
remain there when WSU visits Oregon at 5 p.m. Sunday.
Kent
compared Flynn’s development to that of some of the point guards he coached at
Oregon from 1997 to 2010, including Luke Ridnour, Aaron Brooks and Darius
Wright.
“If you
look at all of them at this point in time, with the exception of Luke Ridnour,
all of them had to go through this period of understanding the position at this
level,” said Kent, Oregon’s all-time leader in coaching victories with 235.
“Transforming from a guy who was the man in high school and dominating the ball
to a guy who has to learn to give up the ball, that’s a big adjustment for a
really good point guard, for all of the ones I coached.
“Ridnour really struggled getting the ball out
of his hands, but once he did that, he blossomed. Brooks was pretty good at it
coming in the door but he just had to mature. Darius was just an exceptional
leader.”
Like
Ridnour and Brooks, Flynn, who played Bellarmine Prep in Tacoma, was a highly
ranked recruit from Washington who was named state player of the year. Ridnour
and Brooks both became all-conference players and led Oregon to an NCAA
regional final then were selected in the first round of the NBA draft.
The
6-foot-1 Flynn averaged 10.1 points, 3.0 rebounds and 2.9 assists as a
freshman, then boosted those numbers to 14.5 points, 4.3 assists and 3.2
rebounds as a sophomore.
“The
things Ridnour, Wright and Brooks did that Malachi needs to learn to do is the
ability to have verbal skills to be vocal in practice and lead a team,” Kent
said. “When those guys took the court in practice, they were the best players
by far every day. Not just two days of the week but every day of their career.
I don’t remember a day when they were not the best player in practice.
“That was
their competitive nature that drove those teams. That’s one of the areas we are
trying to get to while understanding it takes time, but he can get there.”
Flynn has
gone from newcomer on a veteran team last year to WSU’s top returning scorer.
“That is
the toughest position to play on the floor,” Kent said. “You look at the guard
leadership at Arizona State, UCLA and Arizona, those are all veteran, experienced
point guards on those teams. They have guys who have been through the fires.
The growth that needs to happen at that position, I equate it to where I was
with Aaron Brooks early in his career. It took him time, but once he figured it
out, he was pretty darned good.
“Malachi
was the point guard with four good seniors last year and he had to get them the
ball. Now he has to get people the ball and score as well, and that’s a big
adjustment. The more he plays, the better he gets at it.”
WSU (9-14)
sits last in the Pac-12 at 1-10 following a 94-62 loss at Oregon State on
Thursday. The Cougars have lost six consecutive games, by an average margin of
18.3 points, as they prepare to visit the Ducks (16-8, 6-5).
“There are
a few things with this team,” Kent said. “No. 1, realize it is a season and not
a career. We’re working to get better and close out games. No. 2, look at the
tape and see the mistakes that are happening again and again and again. A lot
of them center around experience and making plays to close out games at key
stretches in games. Sometimes it rears its head at 10 minutes to go and
sometimes with 4 minutes to go, but it hits us late in these games. This team
is not a bad team, it’s not like we aren’t talented when you shoot as well as
we do. It’s encouraging to know they can stay in games with opportunities to
win if they figure that piece out. As we go down the stretch, the important
thing is to understand how to do that.”
Washington
State starts three sophomores and two juniors with only one senior in a
nine-man rotation.
“You fix
one thing and something else rears its head,” Kent said. “They all center
around possession by possession, the grind you go through in a 40-minute game.
If you can make 90 percent of things be in the right place at the right time,
we’re going to win a lot of games. We’re about 75 to 80 percent, and that
slippage is killing us right now. That last 15 percent is the hardest to get.
That’s the experience piece that juniors and seniors make those plays.”
///////////
WHO GETS
CREDIT?
As you
know June Daugherty, WSU women’s basketball coach, is on an “indefinite medical
leave of absence” during the current 2017-2018 season. The leave was announced
in late January 2018. Assistant coach Mike Daugherty, her husband, is coaching
the WSU women’s basketball team. News for CougGroup wonders who (which coach) gets
credit (wins and losses) for the games which June does not coach and Mike does?
Not in response to the specific Daugherty-related situation, one NCAA.org
source says, “Generally, if a coach misses a game or limited amount of games
due to a temporary illness, transportation trouble, etc , the wins or losses by
the team in his or her absence will usually go to the head coach.” It will be
interesting, at the end of the season to see whom gets credit in the record
book, for coaching the Cougs while June was on leave. The leave started after
June-coached WSU women’s basketball played 20 games in the current 2017-2018
season. So far in the remaining regular season 10 games Mike has coached five. Following
those 10 games will be game(s) in the Pac-10 tourney and any possible
post-season games.
/////////////////
From
Spokane KHQ-TV
Civil suit
filed against USC football player for hitting WSU student
Posted:
Feb 10, 2018 5:00 PM PST
Updated:
Feb 10, 2018 5:00 PM PST
PULLMAN,
Wash. -
There's
new information about an incident last October, where a USE football player hit
a WSU student who was rushing the field after the Cougs' big win in Pullman.
The WSU
student's lawyer says they've filed a civil lawsuit against USC and the
football player, Liam Jimmons, a redshirt freshman defensive lineman.
The suit
says the student had to be hospitalized for injuries that were "painful,
progressive and permanent."
Back in
December, prosecutors announced they wouldn't be charging Jimmons, adding that
at the time the WSU student was technically trespassing.
CougFan.com
tweeted video of the incident shortly after it happened.
