It’s Been A While

Happy Tuesday Cougar Fans!

It’s been a while since you heard from us, and for that we apologize. I’m not even sure that I have visited this site since last Wednesday, with all of the holiday hoopla and a long, four day weekend.

But truly, what’s more important than spending time with your family during the Holidays? Whether you celebrate Christmas, Boxing Day, Kwanza, Hanukkah or Festivus, I hope 2011 was a great one for you.

Not much has changed for Wazzu in the last week or so, other than the b-ball team continung their six game roll to finish out-of-conference play, with a ho-hum win over Pepperdine last Thursday at Key Arena. This weekend, the Cougs will head north to the Lilac City to take on the Oregon schools to pen up our inaugural season of Pac 12 play. Click the jump for a few more thoughts.

The weekend kicks of with Oregon at 6:00pm and that game can be caught on Comcast Sports Net. In Seattle, I believe that is Channel 179, but I would imagine, since it’s a Portland based channel, that we will have Oregon commentators and no HD. Last season these two teams split the series, with the home team being the victor in each tilt.

Ironically, at the same time, you will be able to flip over to ESPN to watch the Huskies and Baylor Bears go at it down in San Antonio. Hopefully the UW fans get a handful of Hurriances in before this contest, because I don’t think the outcome is going to treat them too well.

But back to the topic at-hand.

After getting embarrased in Anaheim over Thanksgiving Weekend, I voiced my displeasure with the coaching staff and players. Apparently they heard my frustrations (kidding), and are now in place to have their first seven game winning streak since the 2007-2008 season. If I remember correctly, that was also the last year that we made the NCAA Tournament.

That weekend, WSU wore white jerseys in all three contests. I would imagine they try to find some alternate jersey combos for the rest of this year’s road games.

Oregon comes in sporting a 9-3 mark, but have no impressive victories on their resume. Looking at their schedule, you see wins over Fresno and UTEP, but neither of those squads are what they have been in recent years. Looking at some of the most basic of statistics, WSU is a much better squad than Oregon.

On Saturday, the Beavers head over the mountains, and bring with them an impressive 10-2 record. While that is a major improvement on year’s past, their only legitmiate win was a 100-95, Overtime victory against Texas. Since then, Texas has gone on to manhandle a bunch of inferior opponents, while dropping one to North Carolina last week. The Beavs are just outside of the Top 5 in the land, scoring nearly 84 points/game.  They’re also sharing the ball very well, averaging more than 18 assists per game, and shooting at a lights out 49.6% from the floor!

While I don’t know a ton about either opponent, back-to-back victories over these two teams, should mean that the Cougs are going to be really competitive this season. With an awful Utah and unproven Colorado looming the following weekend, 4-0 in-conference play is not out of the realm of possibilities.

First things first though, let’s send the Oregon schools back to the Willammette with their paddles and duck tails between their legs!