It’s hard to not see a lot of ourselves in one of the best stories in college basketball this year.
The start of my deep affection for Wazzu athletics was, lets face it, weird. Basketball? When had the basketball team ever been good enough to stir up loyalty and love for the Cougs? They’d made it to the NCAA Tournament four times in previous 65 years!
But, the best teams in a generation, the first ever back-to-back tournament appearances, and legendary opponents walking through the doors at Beasley Coliseum will do that to you.
When basketball is good is when my heart is the fullest.
And when Jaylen Wells canned a triple I’ll remember forever, it burst beyond capacity into a scream that my neighbors heard.
It might be impossible to pass around enough credit for this team. Every story could be a long form essay itself. Kyle Smith and his coaching staff rebuilding the roster. Myles Rice storming back from chemotherapy to almost certainly lock up first-team all conference. Isaac Jones being an absolute revelation, the best big man at Wazzu since Aron Baynes. Speaking of large Aussies, Oscar Cluff with the softest touch I can remember since … well, Aron Baynes.
But if you looked right past Jaylen Wells as the guy who would be the one to shoulder the load when the team need him most, then you’re just as guilty as I am of something you should know better than: looking past someone.
It’s a good life lesson regardless. But it’s especially poignant given the events of the last six or so months for all of us.
“Wazzu? No, we don’t need them. Hell, they’ve been nothing but a bunch of coattail riders for years, am I right? I mean, it’s terrible that this has to happen for them but dog eat dog, yanno? We have to do what’s best for us. They would too.”
Overlooked. Dismissed. Forgotten about. We’re used to it, right?
Enter Jaylen Wells.
Wells, somehow, spent the first two years of his collegiate career at Sonoma State. Mind you, wine country isn’t a terrible place to refine one’s skill in an attempt to transfer to a bigger school but it is still a Division II institution. How did so many Division I coaches, forget just Power Five coaches, look past Jaylen Wells?
His 247 player page is so spartan it doesn’t even list offers! His Twitter page doesn’t have a list of offers from after he entered the portal this past spring, which most players will happily shout from the hilltops after one is received. Wells, a Division II All-American, best player in his conference a season ago, received a Power Five offer from the Washington State Cougars … and no one else.
Wells wouldn’t start until January, though he was well established in Smith’s rotation before then. Since his first start for the Cougs on Jan. 10 at the USC Trojans, Wells is averaging 16.3 points per game. He has turned the ball over just seven times. He has missed a grand total of five free throws.
He’s shooting 51.6% from beyond the arc. Read that again: since Jan. 10, Wells is making more than half of his three pointers.
But lets go back in time though to Feb. 3, a nail biting, overtime win against the Washington Huskies in Seattle. With 34 seconds left, desperately needing a bucket, Wells drove to his right, pulled up near the elbow and tickled the twine to give WSU a lead. It wouldn’t be the last time the lead changed hands that half but Wells’ coolness under pressure there was something that stuck with me. The dude was inordinately confident that shot was going in. In fact, he’d been working on it recently with … Slick Watts.
The man @jaylen_wells tells no lies. We were in the lab working on that very shot the night before. https://t.co/z33symQEuS pic.twitter.com/zcB6t4RoVK
— Shooting Coach Donald Watts (@donaldwatts24) February 5, 2024
That’s Donald Watts, son of Seattle SuperSonics legend Slick Watts, coaching Jaylen Wells on a shot to help his team put away their rival in the city where he used to play and now lives.
I ask again: how the hell could you overlook Jaylen Wells?
Coming out of Sonoma State, Jaylen Wells had one place to go: Pullman. Overlooked, dismissed, and forgotten about by teams at a level where he very clearly belongs, Wells now plays for a school with the same chip on their shoulder, the same Cougs vs. Everybody mentality. What I see in Jaylen Wells, I see in this school: that you know you belong and no one believes you.
Present company included, hardly anyone thought this team could do anything before the season. So all they’ve bothered to do in the interim is turn in the best regular season for any Washington State team since 2007-2008 with their hands firmly on the steering wheel to do something no basketball team at Washington State has done since 1941: win a regular season conference title.
They had to beat the Arizona Wildcats in the McKale Center, on Neon Night to boot, to control their destiny. And thanks perhaps most of all to a overlooked, dismissed, and forgotten about small forward, they’ve got a chance to make sure that if you’re going to send them to hell, they’re going to drag you with.
In November, if you had Jaylen Wells being the guy to put the Cougs on their back and saunter out of Tucson with their third win in their last four tries or Wazzu to sit on top of the Pac-12 in late February, you’d be lying. But I’d forgive you.
Because no one else would’ve either.