Bennett making WSU basketball cool again

PULLMAN -- Before the Bennetts, basketball was barely a blip on the Palouse's radar. The Cougars merely filled a void until football season began again.

On game nights almost as many students were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, drinking inside The Coug, as there were standing and watching hoops inside silent Beasley Coliseum.

Before the Bennetts, coaching basketball at Washington State was a lonely proposition.

Tony Bennett likes to tell the story about the last moments before his first exhibition game, four seasons ago, as an assistant coach at Washington State.

He walked down the cement ramp, parted the black curtain that opened onto the floor and saw -- nobody. He saw an arena. Saw a lot of red seats. Saw how much work was ahead of him, building a program and building a basketball following.

"They pulled back that black curtain and I took a step and it was like almost a bucket of cold water in your face," said Bennett, who, after three seasons as an assistant, replaced his father, Dick, this season as the Cougars' head coach. "It was like, 'Wow, there's a couple of hundred people here. We've got a ways to go.' "

Faster than anyone could have imagined, Bennett is getting there. In front of the largest home crowd in 24 years, a crowd that arrived early and was loud and involved until the end, Washington State drilled Washington on Saturday, 75-47.

On this wintry afternoon on the Palouse, Beasley was as hot as Allen Fieldhouse or Rupp Arena or the Dean Dome. The building was awash in crimson, and Washington State felt like a basketball school.

"When I drove up to the game and saw the line of students, it kind of was touching," Bennett said. "I saw all those people there, lined up forever. I was like, 'This is cool.' "

Bennett is making basketball cool again at Washington State. Cool for the first time since the Cougars' last winning season, in 1996. Winning is cool, even in the icy grip of winter in eastern Washington.

In Saturday's rout, the Cougars held Washington to the lowest point total of the five-year Lorenzo Romar era, and it was WSU's largest margin of victory ever over Washington.

And the shock was that we shouldn't be shocked. The Cougars, at 16-3, are that good.

They've beaten Gonzaga and Arizona and Washington. After their three-point loss at UCLA to open their conference season, they rebounded two days later and won at USC.

"I think every team should expect us to be competitive, and that's what the Bennett system has brought to this program," junior center Robbie Cowgill said. "If we play the right way, then it shouldn't be a surprise when we win these games."

In Bennett's first year as a head coach, the Cougars have become a legitimate NCAA tournament team. And with the way they play defense, they could do some damage in March.

They knocked out the Huskies with two runs -- a 15-0 spurt in the first half and a 21-4 run to start the second. The defense keyed both runs.

Kyle Weaver made an early block from behind on Washington's Jon Brockman, pinning Brockman's shot against the glass. Ivory Clark's block of Quincy Pondexter made another statement.

"We're that kind of team, and I'll say it and it's true, we're on that fine line," Bennett said. "Our program's built on intangibles. We talk about being humble and being thankful and things like that that matter a lot to our program.

"The intangible is diving on the floor for the loose ball. It's making the extra pass. It's getting back on defense. It's just that poise that maybe you screw up a couple of times, but you keep your poise and your concentration through 40 minutes."

The Huskies, who are 1-6 in Pac-10 play, were bad. They showed, beyond a reasonable doubt, they can't win without freshman center Spencer Hawes, who sprained his left ankle at Friday's practice.

Of course Hawes would have made a difference, but he wouldn't have made the difference. The Huskies, as they've been for much of the Pac-10 season, have been listless and sloppy, Hawes or no Hawes.

"I told the guys I felt good because I held him [Hawes] to zero points, 16 below his average," Cowgill said with a smile that was as humble as his team.

After 10 consecutive losing seasons, there still is no room for gloating in Pullman.

"Being a part of watching this program grow just makes everything sweeter," Cowgill said. "Taking it from where it was to where it is now, I mean it's not like we've arrived or anything like that; we have a long way to go. But their main selling point in recruiting us was, 'We want you guys to rebuild this program and bring credibility back to it.' "

On Saturday, when he walked off the floor and through the black curtain, Tony Bennett should have allowed himself a moment to look over his shoulder.

He would have seen that the arena still was full. That is what credibility looks like.

Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com