The Cougars are not set up to be a good basketball team. And yet they’re on the precipice of breaking one of the longest NCAA tournament droughts among power conference teams.
In the 2003 film The Five Obstructions, Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier challenges his idol and fellow filmmaker Jørgen Leth to recreate his short film The Perfect Human with an arbitrary and increasingly masochistic set of ever-changing rules. Von Trier limits Leth to just 12 frames per shot, forces him to film on-site in “the worst place in the world,” makes him recreate the film as a cartoon, et cetera. There’s a fantastic moment after Von Trier watches the first obstruction (the 12 frame limit), and admits the result gave new life to Leth’s previously pretentious and plodding short. “The 12 frames were a gift!” he exclaims, almost frustrated that the boundaries he painted ended up framing a masterpiece rather than a mess.
As I’ve watched the Washington State men’s basketball team this season, who currently stand at 23-7 and 2nd place in the Pac-12, I’ve thought about The Five Obstructions and the outside circumstances this team has endured while creating art on the hardwood. No team has done more with less and in spite of their obstacles.
Obstruction 1: The transfer portal
Head coach Kyle Smith has patiently been building something special in his five years at the helm in Pullman. The Cougs won seven of their final eight games of the 2022-23 season, behind the leadership of guards TJ Bamba and Justin Powell (combined 26.2 points per game). They had a first-team all-conference star in Mouhamed Gueye. They had their highest ranked recruit in school history in Adrame Diongue. On senior night, forward DJ Rodman surprised everyone and announced he’d return for a fifth year with WSU, prompting Smith to literally jump into his arms.
Then the transfer portal opened.
Gueye and Powell declared for the NBA draft. Bamba transferred to Villanova. Diongue transferred to San Jose State. And then the kick in the stomach: DJ Rodman announced he was transferring to USC. In total: eight players left Washington State in the offseason.
Kyle Smith has had to rebuild an entire team in one summer and somehow struck gold. Idaho transfer Isaac Jones has been a revelation, averaging 15 points and seven rebounds per game. D2 transfer Jaylen Wells is shooting 45 percent from three-point range on nearly five attempts per game, and hit a ridiculous game-winner against No. 4 Arizona. And two freshman additions, Ruben Chinyelu and Isaiah Watts, have shown massive potential already. In a recent game against USC where the rest of the roster struggled, Watts stepped up to score a career high 18 points and secure the win.
Obstruction 2: Consider the geography
There is no getting around the fact that Pullman, Washington is within spitting distance of nothing at all. One of the most isolated campuses among Division I schools, it feels especially detached in the winter, when there’s little else to do for a basketball player beyond shooting drills in Bohler Gym. It takes a dedicated staff and a specific player personality to build a team that makes it worth living in the middle of nowhere. Case in point: Senior forward Andrej Jakimovski, who has been with Wazzu for all four years of his career, played in front of family for the first time just this week.
Obstruction 3: Cancer
It’s impossible to talk about this team without talking about their heart and soul: freshman point guard Myles Rice. Rice committed to WSU in 2021 along with Mouhamed Gueye. But while Gueye in the NBA this year, Rice is a third year freshman. With a senior heavy roster, he redshirted his 2021-22 season. The next summer, just as he was ready to take over, Rice was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. A medical redshirt year followed as Rice underwent chemotherapy treatments. He’s now thankfully cancer free and finally on the court in crimson and gray.
The wait was worth it: Rice has won more Pac-12 Freshman of the Week awards than any player in conference history not named Evan Mobley. The season isn’t yet over but they’re already printing the story: Myles Rice is the greatest freshman basketball player in WSU history.
Obstruction 4: If you build it, will they come?
The last time Washington State was this good, they lost in the Sweet Sixteen to Tyler Hansbrough. Tyler Hansbrough! Needless to say it’s been a minute since Beasley Coliseum has seen this many wins. Beasley, which seats nearly 12,000, has always felt a little optimistic capacity-wise. It’s the 7th-biggest basketball arena in the conference, bigger than USC’s Galen Center or Washington’s Hec Ed. It’s double the size of Gonzaga’s facility up the road. Attendance for their home opener was reported as 2,524 which felt… generous to say the least.
Getting fans back into the building has been a struggle all season, but the attendance has been slowly trickling up as we’ve neared March. Example of the world healing:
Sources: @WSUCougarOps ran out of beer at Beasley tonight. Long lines to get in too. Not prepared for crowd. Be better Saturday.
Two days to restock and get ready for a bigger crowd #GoCougs @WSUCougars
— Ian D Furness (@IanKJRFOX) March 1, 2024
Obstruction 5: That’s a nice conference, sure would be a shame if something happened to it…
Amidst the turmoil of the collapse of their conference, Kyle Smith and his staff have recruited brilliantly, despite a future where this team will be competing with Pepperdine and LMU in the West Coast Conference instead of UCLA and Arizona in the Pac-12. As the tectonic plates of the NCAA shift beneath their feet, the staff in Pullman has consistently found diamonds in the rough willing to march into an uncertain future.
The Cougars play an incredibly slow and efficient style of basketball, 318th in pace according to KenPom, which bodes well for their postseason chances as the game naturally slows down in the tournament. They’re one of the best teams in the country at limiting scoring runs by their opponent, only conceding six double-digit runs all season.
After a March 2 win over UCLA where the Cougs at one point trailed by 13, Myles Rice was asked about the uncharacteristically slow start to the game. His response wrapped up the win and Washington State’s season in one simple sentence: “It wouldn’t be a great story if it didn’t have its ups and its downs.”
