SPOKANE — A strong defensive effort, the kind George Raveling said would be commonplace this year, was the deciding factor in a 53-44 college basketball victory by Washington State University against Gonzaga Wednesday night.
A crowd of 3,217 at the Spokane Coliseum saw the Cougars strangle the Zags with a hustling man-to-man defense. Meanwhile, on offense, the Cougars were passing out 16 assists on their 23 field goals. Those are statistics even pass-happy Oregon State would be proud to have. That helped the Cougars to 23 of 44 shooting, 52.2 percent.
“I think an indication of how well we hustled is when Guy Williams dove for a loose ball and got a floor burn. That’s like a 20-point season average to me,” Raveling, the WSU coach, said after the game.
The win puts the Cougars at 2-2 for the season and they open their home schedule Friday at Friel Court against an explosive Oklahoma City team at 7:30 p.m.
The host Bulldogs of the West Coast Athletic Conference are now 1-1 under new head coach Jay Hillock and now play Montana Monday at home.
“I come up here every year and if we get out of here with a one or two-point win I’m happy as hell,” said Raveling.
The motivation, he said, is with the Zags to knock off the local Pac-10 team. It’s a nothing to lose situation for the Zags and a nothing to win situation for the Cougars, according to Raveling.
But Wednesday night the motivation and hustle by the Cougars were there all night.
“I think it’s obvious we’re a much better team defensively than last year,” Raveling said.
Before the start of the season Raveling said he had a goal of giving up just 59 points a game on the average. A few more games like Wednesday and the Cougars may even do better than that.
And while the defense was there, the offense wasn’t making many mistakes. WSU had just nine turnovers and last year at this time single players couldn’t come close to staying under that mark.
“I looked at the first half stats and I think we had 10 assists on 13 buckets and I was just pleased with everything we did,” Raveling said.
The Zags weren’t overly impressed with the Cougars in the first five minutes of the game as they went out and grabbed an 8-2 lead.
Then the Zags were surprised by the two soft jump shots Mike Spaid put in for the Pullman team.
Spaid, a 6-foot-10, 240-pound junior college transfer who went to high school at Cheney, was impressive in spots with a two-for-four shooting night for four points.
What’s more, he came up with three steals in his spots of hustling defense.
“I was really surprised with Spaid’s effort,” said Hillock. “They’ve done a lot with him because he’s not much of an athlete. He put more pressure on (Duane) Bergenson than we thought he would.”
Spaid’s two straight buckets made it 8-6 and then two free throws by Williams tied the score.
Williams then put on an inside move on the right side and the vastly-improved Aaron Haskins hit a 15-foot jumper from the left side for 10 straight points by the Cougars.
“Haskins played good and I was extremely pleased with Williams because he played totally controlled,” Raveling said.
Williams, a 6-9 junior, had two other impressive moves near the mid-way point of the first half to keep WSU in control.
Still, Gonzaga held close with some good shooting from Tim Wagoner who finished with a game-high 15 points and some strong rebounding.
“What allowed them to stay close is that we didn’t get a lot of second shots in the first half,” Raveling said.
At halftime, WSU had just a 13-12 rebound edge and Wagner had 11 points on four of seven shooting.
But the Cougars were able to get a four-point lead at the break thanks to a hot streak by Ken McFadden who also led the team with four assists.
The long-shooting senior guard hit a 20-footer from the top of the key to tie the score at 25-25, then a 20-footer from the right baseline for a 27-25 score. With two seconds left and the ball out of bounds, the Cougars were able to get the ball into McFadden and he drilled a 25-footer from the top of the key at the buzzer.
At the start of the second half the Cougars added two more buckets and got in control at 33-25. Haskins canned a 10-footer on the baseline and Williams popped one from the opposite baseline.
Wagoner canned a 20-footer for the Zags, but Brad Ness came back with a long shot for WSU, and Haskins chipped in a free throw and a slam dunk on a rebound for a 38-27 score with 13:46 left.
“We came out and turned the ball over twice and had a player take two bad shots and we were down by eight,” Hillock said.
“In this type of game, eight points is a big difference.”
The Zags popped within five once and seven a couple of times, but the Cougars would either answer with a pair of buckets or slow the game down a bit to regain control.
When the defense is holding a team to just 44 points, it’s hard not to be in control most of the time.
WASHINGTON STATE (53)
FG-A FT-A R F TP
Guy Williams ...... .......... 5-12 2-2 4 4 12
Aaron Haskins .... .......... 4-7 1-2 8 2 9
Steve Harriel ..... .......... 2-2 2-2 2 1 6
Ronnie Joyner .... .......... 2-3 0-0 2 0 4
Tyrone Brown ..... .......... 2-3 1-2 1 1 5
Brad Ness .......... .......... 2-5 0-0 0 1 4
Ken McFadden ... .......... 3-5 0-0 2 4 6
Chris Winkler ..... .......... 0-0 0-1 0 1 0
Craig Ehlo .......... .......... 0-2 1-2 3 3 1
Mike Wurm ........ .......... 1-1 0-0 0 0 2
Mike Spald ......... .......... 2-4 0-1 2 1 4
Team................. ........... 1
Totals ............. ........... 23-44 7-12 25 18 53
GONZAGA (44)
FG-A FT-A R F TP
John Stockton ................ 1-4 4-5 0 4 6
Bryce McPhee ................. 1-6 0-1 3 1 2
Bill Dunlap ....................... 2-3 3-4 6 2 7
Duane Bergenson ............. 4-7 0-0 4 3 8
Tim Wagoner ................... 6-15 3-4 1 3 15
Joe Whitney ..................... 0-1 0-0 0 0 0
Dale Wiltala ..................... 2-3 2-2 4 3 8
Blair Anderson ................. 0-0 0-0 0 0 0
Jason Van Nort ................ 0-0 0-0 1 0 0
Team .............................. 6
Totals ..............................16-39 12-16 25 16 44
Halftime score — Washington State 29, Gonzaga 25
Attendance — 3,217.
This story was published in the Dec. 3, 1981, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.
