Wazzu men open WCC play with dominant win in Portland

PORTLAND, Ore. — Ethan Price stood at the top of the key 12 seconds after Washington State won the opening tipoff and let his 3-point shot fly through the bottom of the net.

Price connected from deep again just two minutes later to give the WSU men’s basketball team the lead for good. Half a minute after that, all LeJuan Watts had to do was casually slip the ball behind him to Price, who made yet another wide-open 3-pointer from about the same spot.

The three quick offensive splashes from Price allowed WSU (11-3, 1-0) to build an early double-digit lead over Portland (5-9, 0-1) and beat the Pilots 89-73 in the Cougars’ inaugural West Coast Conference opener on Saturday at the Chiles Center in Portland.

Price paced the Cougs with 22 points and Nate Calmese added 18 as both players snagged seven rebounds and dished out five assists.

Each WSU starter posted double figures as Watts (14 points, eight rebounds) and senior forward Dane Erikstrup (11 points) boosted WSU to its sixth win in the last seven games, despite injuries to multiple players, including two starters. Forward ND Okafor provided 12 points off the bench.

Price sets the standard

Price made three 3-pointers within the game’s first two-and-a-half minutes. He also contributed eight of the Cougars’ 16 points in a four-minute span which saw WSU grow its lead from one to 15 by the 14:48 mark of the first half.

“Just reading the game. I think the early 3s I had, I was open, so I shot them,” Price said. “Put a lot of work in, and stayed ready and they went in.”

After scoring 11 points in the game’s first six minutes, Price finished with his game-high 22 points and seven rebounds, at one point taking more than half the Portland lineup with him on his way to a basket at the rim.

“He’s got, I think, 1,000 points, 500 rebounds, 200 assists,” WSU coach David Riley said. “Those are crazy numbers. Like, most of the time, that’s hanging in the rafters for having a career like that. (And) he’s not even done.”

Riley said several of his former colleagues at Eastern Washington work for Portland and so Price had a little edge going into the game knowing he would get to face some of his former coaches.

Arturo Ormond was Riley’s associate head coach at EWU and now serves as an assistant coach on Shantay Legans’ Portland staff.

T.J. Lipold also comes to Portland from Cheney and worked with Price when he first got to EWU in 2021.

“It was a personal game I wanted to play well in,” Price said. “I have good relationships with those guys.

WSU lets large lead decay yet again

The Cougars led by as many as 28 points midway through the first half, and again by 26 points in the second half, but allowed the Pilots to narrow the gap each time.

Price and Okafor made layups and Watts, who blocked a shot at the rim in the early minutes, made a 3-pointer to extend the Cougar lead to 19-4 just over five minutes into the contest.

The Cougars further forged their early advantage thanks to Erikstrup, who sunk three 3-pointers and grabbed an offensive board and second-chance layup just 14 miles from his home in Beaverton, Ore.

Calmese continued his hot hand with 11 points, five rebounds and three assists in the first half as part of an 18-point, seven-rebound, five-assist evening.

The Washington transfer made his money in transition, at one point fully extending his arm to intercept a Pilot pass, gallop down the court and feed WSU freshman guard Tomas Thrastarson, who started the game in place of an injured Isaiah Watts, who will miss several weeks with a left hand injury.

The Pilots staged several significant runs to cut into WSU leads, including a 7-0 run in the first half and a 10-0 run in the second half, which was punctuated by a high-flying Vincent Delano dunk and sandwiched by two Kelson Gebbers’ 3-pointers which shrunk the WSU lead to 16 with 3:26 left in the game.

Max Mackinnon paced the Pilots with 22 points, including 16 in the second half, while Austin Rapp added 17 points with a perfect 10-for-10 clip from the free throw line.

“It’s hard to be consistent. They’re trying to be consistent too, and yeah, we want to fight for 40 minutes and all that stuff, but they threw some different looks at us,” Riley said. “They mixed it up offensively and started playing with a little more pace, and we didn’t adjust fast enough. I think there’s a mix-and-match. We got to fight the human nature to not relax, and we got to adjust a little bit.”

Injuries require freshmen to step up

Isaiah Watts’ absence further complicates Riley’s lineup as the Cougars proceed into conference play with arguably their best player, Cedric Coward, out for the season and rotational players Marcus Wilson and Rihards Vavers out for the year as well.

Freshman guard Tomas Thrastarson started in Isaiah Watts’ place and posted six points, five assists and a rebound.

Redshirt freshman Parker Gerrits, playing about two hours down Interstate-5 from his home in Olympia, Wash., sunk a 3-pointer during WSU’s opening offensive surge and true freshman Kase Wynott, who set Idaho’s all-time high school scoring record at Lapwai High School, made a second-half 3-pointer along the left wing off of a quick Erikstrup pass.

Riley said guys like Thrastarson, Gerrits and Wynott have put in the work to earn the opportunity they have now.

“The fall we had gave them confidence,” Riley said of his younger players. “They went toe-to-toe with our starters, and on different days, they were better than our starters, and they made it really tough for me to figure out the playing rotations. ... They were ready for this moment, and they’re just getting a chance to show that now.”

Wynott spent 21 minutes on the floor and Gerrits played 11 in WSU’s WCC opener.

“They’ve done really good job,” Price said of the younger players stepping into bigger roles. “I think naturally, when guys go down, guys might see it as a nerve-wracking opportunity, but I think these guys — these younger guys, especially — have been able to step into a bigger role and play more freely, play longer minutes, and that’s helped them develop.”

What’s ahead for Wazzu?

WSU hosts Loyola Marymount on Monday at Spokane Arena before the calendar flips to 2025.

The Cougs’ inaugural year in the WCC will include eight more games at Beasley Coliseum, including a rematch with Portland at 3 p.m. on Jan. 18.

The Cougars’ much anticipated regional meeting with Gonzaga will first occur on Saturday, Jan. 11 in at the 6,000-seat McCarthey Athletic Center in Spokane.

The Cougs and the Zags will meet again at 6 p.m. Feb. 19 in Pullman.

With WSU’s best player, Coward, out for the year and Isaiah Watts out for the foreseeable future, Price said the Cougars’ team goals have not changed.

“You gotta play with the cards you’ve got,” Price said. “We know that even with the guys that we’ve got right now, we can still be an amazing team. Our aim is to win the WCC, go to March Madness — that’s still the aim.”

WASHINGTON ST. (11-3)

Erikstrup 4-9 0-0 11, Price 8-11 2-2 22, L.Watts 4-8 3-4 14, Calmese 8-14 0-0 18, Thrastarson 2-5 2-4 6, Wynott 1-3 0-0 3, Okafor 5-7 2-3 12, Gerrits 1-3 0-0 3. Totals 33-60 9-13 89.

PORTLAND (5-9)

Dengdit 2-3 0-0 5, Rapp 3-10 10-10 17, Ballisager Webb 0-0 2-2 2, Delano 3-8 0-0 7, Mackinnon 9-16 4-4 22, Gebbers 2-6 0-0 6, Austin 0-1 0-0 0, Ballew 4-7 0-0 9, Masic 2-7 0-0 5, Jones 0-0 0-0 0, Oakman 0-1 0-2 0. Totals 25-59 16-18 73.

Halftime — Washington St. 51-30. 3-Point Goals — Washington St. 14-25 (Price 4-6, L.Watts 3-3, Erikstrup 3-7, Calmese 2-3, Gerrits 1-2, Wynott 1-2, Thrastarson 0-2), Portland 7-23 (Gebbers 2-5, Dengdit 1-1, Ballew 1-3, Delano 1-3, Masic 1-4, Rapp 1-6, Mackinnon 0-1). Fouled Out — Okafor. Rebounds — Washington St. 35 (L.Watts 8), Portland 22 (Rapp 6). Assists — Washington St. 24 (Price, Calmese, Thrastarson 5), Portland 15 (Rapp 4). Total Fouls — Washington St. 17, Portland 14. A — 2,228 (4,852).

Taylor can be reached at 208-848-2268, staylor@lmtribune.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @Sam_C_Taylor.