WSU's string of 17 straight defeats has taken its toll on the Cougars who barely put up a fight in their latest loss.
Here’s video of Washington State’s Ernie Kent, Ike Iroegbu and Josh Hawkinson after the 12th-seeded Cougars lost 80-56 to No. 5 seed Colorado in Wednesday’s Pac-12 opener at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
And here’s a few quotes from Kent.
(Opening statement) “It’s been a long stretch for this team, and several occasions they’ve had the energy, they’ve had the character to bounce back and give effort, give intensity in the midst of a tough, tough stretch of losing games for this group. There’s a part of me that’s real proud of them because in this day and age I think it’s very difficult for young people to continue to bounce back when they’re not having any success without making excuses and pointing fingers, and they never did that. They continued to come back and battle. I just didn’t feel like we had any energy or any juice in the game. I felt like Colorado had a lot of energy and lot of juice, with obviously something they’re playing for, solidifying, if they’re not already in, which they should be, a victory to get themselves into the tournament.”
(On difference between today and previous games against Colorado) “The biggest difference is, again, it’s the mental part of the game, and this is a mental-fatigued basketball team. When you work as hard as we work, not only on the floor but weight room, in the classroom, and you do it again and again and again, and you do not have an opportunity to feel that euphoria of having success, that’s hard to do mentally and continue to do that. Now, to their credit, they’ve done an excellent job of bouncing back and they’ve played some terrific basketball, maybe only being out of whack in stretches of games. Whereas I felt like this game was a whole half we really couldn’t get ourselves going. So the biggest difference, I thought: They were the same team; we were a different team coming into the game.”
(On limiting Josh Scott) “We’ve got good size on this team. I think we did a good job of banging them a little bit. We double teamed him a couple times early just to kind of keep him off rhythm. But understanding and limiting him, we gave up ten threes in the game. So you kind of pick your poison when they’re shooting the ball like that. We didn’t double team him every single time. I just think our size matches up with Colorado’s size inside, which gives us an opportunity to neutralize some of the things that Josh does. I thought we were really good at paying attention to detail in terms of where he was at on the floor and limiting his touches and really not letting him get into a rhythm, particularly early into the game.”