No. 22 Washington State advances to Pac-12 semis with 79-62 win over Stanford

WSU adds another game to their schedule.

The No. 22 Washington State Cougars used a strong first half to fly past the Stanford Cardinal in the quarterfinals of the Pac-12 tournament, winning 79-62.

WSU — six days removed from their last game — looked energized from the opening tip. The Cougs controlled the game offensively, attacking the undersized Cardinal with 42 of their points coming from the paint. The frontcourt duo of Isaac Jones and Rueben Chinyelu led the charge inside with 16 and 10 respectively while snatching a combined 10 rebounds.

While Oscar Cluff did get the start, Chinyelu proved to be the better matchup against the Cardinal who had no answer for Chinyelu’s toughness. The big man was in his lab tonight, analyzing and breaking down Stanford’s post defense time and time again.

In their last game, Andrej Jakimovski was noticeably ailing from a shoulder injury that left him struggling to shoot the ball and even play effective defense. Tonight, aided by some KT tape, he looked like the Jakimovski of old. The senior drilled a trio of treys in the first half to lead all scorers into the halftime break with 11.

Coming off the bench, Kymany Houinsou made an impact on both ends of the court. His defense helped lock down the Cardinal offense and he was able to slash past the Cardinal jerseys for some buckets inside. The Frenchman recorded a pair of blocks, including a great chase-down to eviscerate a Stanford fast break. Right before the halftime buzzer, he capped his outstanding first half with a bucket inside off a great feed from Jones to push WSU up 16 points and give him seven in the half.

Last night, Stanford rallied from 18 down for an overtime victory against the rival California Golden Bears. While WSU, held a lead as high as 24, Stanford made their push for a second straight comeback with a 12-2 run to bring the game within 14. After a timeout to stop the momentum, WSU quickly erased any hopes Stanford had of back-to-back herculean comebacks with a 9-2 run to put the Cougs back up 21 and able to go on cruise control for the final seven and a half minutes.

It’s been awhile since WSU looked this sharp early in a ballgame. Perhaps the time off, the stage, or both, helped rejuvenize this team. They looked every bit the part of not just a NCAA Tournament caliber team, but a team that can make a run in the dance. We hadn’t seen that from this team down the stretch of the regular season, as they looked lethargic at times early in games and hadn’t really blown anybody out since their win over Cal nearly a month ago to the date.

At this stage of the season, you don’t have any future games on your schedule except for the one directly in front of you. Your wins are now rewarded with adding another game to your schedule. There is no excuse to look ahead to what’s next because as far as the schedule is concerned, you only have one game left.

And for their outstanding efforts tonight, they have earned another game on their schedule. WSU will now play the winner of the Utah Utes vs Colorado Buffaloes game in the semi-finals at 7:30 p.m. on Friday.