WSU Hoops Weekend: Men get big win over Bradley, women split weekend

The first weekend of the 2024-25 college basketball season has concluded and both the Washington State Cougar men’s and women’s teams secured their second wins of the early season.

On Friday, the men hosted the Bradley Braves and earned an impressive 91-74 victory, outscoring the Braves 46-32 in the second half. The women traveled to the Bay Area to try to finally upend their longtime nemesis, the Stanford Cardinal. WSU held firm, but in the end Stanford proved overmatched and pulled away in the fourth quarter to win 94-65. The Cougs bounced back Sunday afternoon to defeat the Idaho Vandals in the first part of a two-day doubleheader as the men will face the Vandals on Monday night.

It will take some time to get used to a WSU team that seems capable of scoring at will. 191 points in the first two games is the highest score since 199 at the Los Angeles Classic at the start of the 1991/92 season. Bradley is no pushover either. The Braves entered Friday night ranked 78th in KenPom and have finished in the top 64 defensively each of the last three seasons.

For the second straight game, six Cougs had double-digit points. Cedric Coward and Nate Calmese led the game with 18 points each. Denmark’s Erikstrup scored 16, Ethan Price dropped 14, LeJuan Watts contributed 12 and Isaiah Watts came off the bench for 10.

Bradley was one of the best three-point shooting teams in the country last season, hitting 37% of its three-point attempts, good for 22nd in the country. The Braves showed their shooting skills early on, hitting four of their first ten three-pointers. On the other hand, WSU had offensive success in many ways. Price and Erikstrup each knocked down early three-pointers, and Watts hit two fastbreak shots to give WSU a lead it would never relinquish.

Price extended the lead with a personal 6-0 run before passing the torch to Calmese, who made his own three-pointer with back-to-back deuces.

The Braves’ sharpshooters kept the game close, shooting 7/16 from long range to make it a three-point game after the halftime whistle. WSU stormed out of the gates in the second half, with Erikstrup, Calmese and Price each knocking down three-pointers, giving WSU a 12-point lead. Bradley stopped WSU’s kill shot chance with a single free throw, but WSU immediately responded with a 10-0 run to put the game on the line. Just six and a half minutes into the second half, they were now leading by 21.

From there, WSU held steady and steered the rest of the way toward as impressive a victory as can be achieved early this season.

Stanford has long been a concern for WSU’s women’s program. Tara VanDerveer has never lost to WSU in her 38 seasons at the helm. With her retirement, maybe, just maybe, it was finally the time for WSU to defeat the mighty Cardinal.

As in almost every game in this series, WSU had to chase the Cardinal early and just couldn’t catch up. With 11 and 10 first-half points from Tara Wallack and Ele Villa, the game remained respectable in the first half, but a 15-2 run in the final three minutes of the third quarter put the Cardinal ahead by 21 destroying all of WSU’s hopes and finally conquering Stanford.

Villa led the Cougs with 19 points on a very efficient 8/12 shooting from the field, draining three of her four three-point attempts.

The Cougars bounced back on Sunday by defeating their cross-border rival Idaho Vandals 71-60. Wallack led the Cougars in both points (14) and rebounds (8).

Despite a terrible 3/17 shooting from beyond the arc, WSU gained its advantage by committing 22 Idaho turnovers and scoring 17 points from the Vandals’ mistakes. WSU led for all but 1:17 of game time when the Vandals took a 9-8 lead in the first quarter and took the lead again for another 15 seconds midway through the second quarter.

WSU made up for its misses from deep by hitting 22/28 from the charity stripe. Seven personal fouls by the Vandals in the first quarter gave WSU eight shots, six of which were missed in the first 10 minutes.

The Cougars were only able to separate themselves from the Vandals after halftime. WSU eventually pulled away and began the third frame with a 16-4 run, opening the third frame behind a combined effort from Alex Covill, Astera Tuhina, Marta Alsina, Villa and Wallack.

Idaho rallied in the fourth quarter to get within seven, but the Cougs held off the Vandal comeback effort at the free throw line. The Cougs hit 9/10 free throws in the fourth quarter to keep the game out of reach and secure their second win of the young season.