A small group of reporters is standing outside the visitors’ locker room at McKale Center. Inside that room, the Washington State Cougars are singing.
“We’re from Pullman, freakin’ Pullman, freakin’ Pullman, we don’t care!
“I’d rather be from Pullman than a chump from anywhere! Go Cougs!”
Michael Lev is a senior writer/columnist for the Arizona Daily Star, Tucson.com and The Wildcaster.
The ditty’s unofficial title is “Ballad of the Palouse.” Others call it “Ode to Pullman.”
Either way, the message is the same. It echoes the post that’s pinned atop one of WSU Athletics’ official social-media feeds: “COUGS vs. EVERYBODY.”
Washington State has embraced the underdog role forever. No Pac-12 outpost is more remote. Few conference enrollments are smaller. Seldom is much expected from WSU’s teams. Often, those expectations are exceeded, even obliterated.
No Cougar club in recent times exemplifies WSU’s underdog status more than the current men’s basketball team. The media who cover the Pac-12 picked this group of vagabonds to finish 10th in the league. Instead, they are the No. 2 seed in the conference tournament that gets underway Wednesday in Las Vegas — and the biggest threat to No. 1 seed Arizona.
Washington State’s Myles Rice (2), Andrej Jakimovski (23), Isaiah Watts (12), Jaylen Wells (0), and Isaac Jones (13) take the court during the second half of the Cougars’ matchup with Oregon on Jan. 6 in Pullman, Washington.
There’s nothing I could write that would persuade a UA fan to root for WSU should the two meet in the final Pac-12 Tournament title game. It’s a fool’s errand, a nonstarter, a waste of time.
But should the Cougars make it to the final game and the Wildcats somehow not, you should pull for Pullman.
When WSU makes the NCAA Tournament, you should push the Palouse posse deep into your bracket.
The Cougars are an easy team to root for. At a minimum, they deserve respect.
“We have a lot of amazing underdog stories on our team,” junior forward Jaylen Wells said after completing an unlikely 4-point play to stun the Wildcats on Feb. 22. “It just kind of fits.”
Wells came to WSU from Division II Sonoma State. He’s averaging 12.2 points per game and is shooting 42% from 3-point range.
Arizona center Oumar Ballo, right, gets a two-handed block on Washington State forward Isaac Jones in their Pac-12 game at McKale Center on Feb. 22.
Leading scorer and rebounder Isaac Jones spent three seasons at Wenatchee Valley College in Wenatchee, Washington, which is far better known for producing delicious apples than deluxe basketball players. Jones then spent one season at Idaho before perplexing the Pac-12 with his left-handed, old-man game.
The Cougars’ second-leading scorer and top assist man, Myles Rice, is a cancer survivor. He missed the 2022-23 season while undergoing chemotherapy treatments for a form of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He now averages a team-high 32.8 minutes per game.
Center Oscar Cluff, who averages 7.6 points and 4.7 rebounds, is another JC transfer, via Cochise College. Senior forward Andrej Jakimovski (10.1 points, 5.5 boards) comes from the basketball hotbed of North Macedonia, whose most distinguished NBA export is Cedi Osman.
The utterly unassuming leader of this band is Kyle Smith, who, when he dons his glasses, appears just as capable of doing your taxes as drawing up a pick-and-roll. Do not be fooled. All Smith does is win.
Columbia won 20-plus games in two of Smith’s final three seasons there. San Francisco won 20-plus in all three of his seasons with the Dons. WSU has won 20-plus two of the past three years. The Cougars hadn’t hit that mark since 2011.
Smith is the first coach in WSU history to post a .500 or better record in each of his first five seasons. The Cougars finished under .500 the previous seven campaigns; their best record over that span was 13-18.
Despite a lack of recent success, a lack of tradition, the remoteness of Pullman and the frostiness of the Palouse, Smith has the Cougars on an undeniably upward trajectory. Their Pac-12 records the past five seasons: 6-12, 7-12, 11-9, 11-9, 14-6.
“Honestly, it’s his mentality. He’s really detail-oriented,” Wells said of Smith, a longtime advocate of analytics. “And then his passion. He’s a very passionate coach.”
Washington State coach Kyle Smith directs his team during the second half of the Cougars’ 73-70 win over Arizona on Jan. 13 in Pullman, Washington. WSU is 3-1 vs. Arizona over the past two seasons.
That side of Smith was evident when he participated in the postgame chanting and crooning at McKale. WSU posted a video of the entire, extensive celebration, which also included the team sprinting down the hallway and back onto the court to congratulate assistant coach and Tucson native Jeremy Harden, who had proposed to his girlfriend on the Block A logo. (She said yes.)
Smith, his staff and their players gathered in a circle in the locker room, arms wrapped around shoulders, to commemorate their eighth consecutive victory and 11th in their previous 12 games — including two against Arizona.
This is where the respect part comes in. If you can regularly, or even occasionally, defeat Arizona — the preeminent program in the Pac-12 over the past 35 years by almost every measure — you deserve props.
The Wildcats have lost three home games in three seasons under Tommy Lloyd. Two have come against WSU, which authored the only one of the three that didn’t require an implausible shot at the buzzer or an improbable one in the final minute.
Arizona forward Keshad Johnson (16) looks around after being charged with a foul on Washington State forward Jaylen Wells’ 3-point basket in the final seconds of their Pac 12 game at McKale Center on Feb. 22. The free throw put the Cougars up 75-74 en route to a 77-74 road win.
Arizona is 1-3 against Washington State the past two seasons. Against every other Pac-12 opponent, including tournament games, the Wildcats are 31-8.
“People were saying, ‘Oh, you guys gotta go play Arizona,’ ” Wells said after the Feb. 22 upset. “Nah, they gotta play us.”
If the bracket holds, they will play again Saturday. Another reason to root for the Cougs: The better they do up to that point, the better it is for Arizona’s résumé.
Yet another reason: WSU was one of two teams left behind when the realignment roulette wheel stopped spinning. Oregon State had college football’s collective heart in the fall. Washington State ought to have college basketball’s in March.
“I told the guys before the season. I said, ‘This is a tournament team. If we don’t get there, it’s on me,’ ” Smith said. “I tried to take the pressure off because I thought our talent was good enough. When we beat ’SC (on Jan. 10), we started believing. We’ve been hammering it a lot, just being a good team.
“Joy is the engine of change. And these guys enjoy each other.”
You can see it in their play. You can hear it in their song.
