PULLMAN, Wash. — Washington State announced that 4,607 fans entered Beasley Coliseum on Thursday, meaning (at least) 61 percent of the arena's seats were empty.
That’s by far the lowest crowd of any non-ballroom crowd the Wildcats have played in front of this season, and UA’s blowout win ensured a minimum of noise. Throughout the second half, hardly the only voices audible to those of us sitting midway up were those of the cheerleaders.
Obviously, that wasn’t a problem for Allonzo Trier and Deandre Ayton.
“We understand there’s a bigger goal at hand and we’re playing for it,” Trier said. “We have to be incredibly locked in on road games. If you go and lose on a night like this it can come back to bite you. So we want to be at our best.”
Trier responded by making all eight of his shots and scoring 24 points. Ayton had 25 points on 11-for-12 shooting and 11 rebounds, also unconcerned with the environment he was playing in.
“That don’t matter. Don’t matter,” Ayton said. “It was a big game regardless, because of who we were playing. You know what I mean? Whoever we play it’s a big game. We just come out and try to win every game.”
While Ayton played well in his home country before those ballroom crowds in the Bahamas, many of his teammates did not. Miller indicated the Wildcats’ maturity has improved since those days, allowing the Wildcats to handle the mellow environment at WSU.
“The crowd can be loud and sometimes not, but we can’t worry about that,” Miller said. “Same thing at home. We’re not gonna win because we have one of the great crowds in college basketball. We appreciate it and we love it. Does it help us? Of course. But we have to perform well in addition to that.
“On the road, it’s the same thing: You can’t cave in if the crowd gets loud. You know before the game starts that that’s the case and if you enter an arena that doesn’t have a lot of energy, you have to play and know you only have each other and play the right away, which we did a good job of.”
In case you happened to come across the original box score distributed in person and on the wires after the game, it listed Trier as going 8 for 9 from the field.
His line was changed to 8 for 8, with a turnover instead and a steal received by WSU’s Malachi Flynn, because one of his “attempts” was ruled a failed alley-oop attempt.
That meant Trier had a perfect shooting night except for a missed free throw, all before he heads back to his hometown for a Saturday night game at Washington.
“Allonzo’s one of the best players in the country,” Miller said. “He’s gone through a lot of different things. I think it’s built his character. He’s playing the best basketball of his career for us. And we’re gonna need him to play great on Saturday.”
The corrected box score and updated stats are attached to this post, along with our game story, seen-and-heard notes and a photo gallery.
