Men's Basketball | Cougs' seniors bow out Saturday

It's entirely fitting that one more question would accompany this senior class at Washington State, which entered WSU four years ago amid so many of them.

Has there ever been a more important, more consequential group of seniors in the basketball history of the school?

Saturday, when Washington visits Friel Court, the Cougars will honor five seniors. Four of them — Derrick Low, Kyle Weaver, Robbie Cowgill and Chris Henry — arrived together in the fall of 2004, and they couldn't have had even an inkling of what they were in for.

Originally, they were a group of six, the first full-year recruiting class of Dick Bennett. Guard Josh Akognon transferred to Cal State-Fullerton and Daven Harmeling redshirted a season after shoulder surgery. A fifth senior, guard Jeremy Cross, transferred in from Puget Sound.

They will leave having led the Cougars to two straight NCAA tournaments, a first in school history. They're one win away from the two-year best of 49, established in the 1939-40 and '40-41 seasons.

But you can't really appreciate where they've come until you realize where they were.

"Oh, man, it was a bunch of low points," said Weaver, responding to a question.

None lower, though, than the afternoon of Dec. 4, 2004, in Stillwater, Okla. That day, the Cougars, with Low injured and Weaver, Cowgill and Harmeling playing reserve roles, lost to the Cowboys, 81-29.

After 15 minutes, WSU trailed 29-2. It was 36-10 at halftime.

It was frightful.

Says Cowgill, "I just remember feeling like, 'I am so over my head right now' — looking at these big, grown men playing above the rim, strong and fast and so much bigger than the young guys.

" 'Do I belong on this level? Can we play at this level?' It sure didn't seem like it."

The Cougars got to the locker room at halftime, where they found Bennett, in his second season at WSU, taking a humane tack.

"Dick Bennett was almost a little bit apologetic," said Cowgill. "Like, 'You guys weren't ready for this. I shouldn't have scheduled it.'

"Tony [Bennett, the heir to the job] got really fired up, like, 'No, Dad — you guys need to figure it out.' He was right. We were scared freshmen and we were playing that way."

Finally, when it was about over, the OSU students began a singsong chant: "Thanks for practice!"

"I had quite a bit of family there," Cowgill says. "We were just humiliated, feeling awful, just kind of wanting to cover up my face."

The Cougars' ascent from the ashes of the Paul Graham regime — his teams went 9-63 in Pac-10 games — wasn't exactly gradual. Late the next month, against all reason, they went into Tucson and shocked Arizona, ending a ghoulish 38-game winning streak by the Wildcats in the series.

Thomas Kelati, whom the Bennetts groomed into an All-Pac-10 player that year, led the way with 27 points. But Kelati and other seniors like Chris Schlatter and Jeff Varem would be gone the next year, and now it would truly be on Low, Weaver and Cowgill, and the following season, Harmeling.

"When those guys left," said Weaver, referring to Kelati-led seniors, "I wouldn't say it put a burden on us, but we had to step it up pretty quick."

They stepped it up, but pretty slowly. In Dick Bennett's last of three years, he had his poorest conference record, 4-14, and down the stretch, the Cougars assembled some scores that caused serious skepticism outside about whether winning was going to take place under the Bennetts.

Washington State lost in Pullman to UCLA, 50-30. In Dick Bennett's final nine games, the Cougars were held in the 30s three times.

"We were young, just a bunch of sophomores," says Cowgill. "We were just in that hunker-down defensive mentality. I remember feeling tight in some games, more nervous. We probably weren't ready to compete offensively in the Pac-10."

There were a pair of six-game losing streaks during the Pac-10 season, including a 52-50 loss to Oregon when Malik Hairston dropped a pair of threes in the last half-minute.

"I just remember being so down, like, 'Man, this just isn't that fun right now,' " Cowgill says.

For Low, it was a different frustration. For the second straight season, he broke a bone in his foot.

"Same exact thing," he says. "I wasn't thinking too positively at that time. We just kept together, stuck with it, and all the hard work paid off."

And in December 2006, the younger Bennett now leading them, and the Cougars chased down Gonzaga in front of a sellout crowd at Friel Court. Something caught fire, and only sporadically has it been tamed since. WSU is 48-15 the past two seasons.

And something Dick Bennett had said proved prophetic. You had to recruit guys you could lose with first, people who wouldn't point fingers during the bad times. And boy, were there bad times.

"I didn't realize how important that is," said Cowgill. "I've kind of seen that isn't the norm, for a group of players and coaches to stick it out — the coaches to stick to their system and players to keep that trust in it.

"Losing together builds cohesion, it really does. It really bonds you when you've gone through something like we have."

Dick Bennett will be there Saturday to see the final reconciliation of a gnawing void, something that never felt right when he abruptly left Wisconsin late in 2000 after he had just taken a team to the Final Four.

It's a class his son had a key part in recruiting. Asked about it this week, Tony Bennett put aside his gotta-focus-on-the-game stoicism and spoke from the heart.

"Where the program was when they came in, and where they're leaving it, is special," Bennett said. "Most of the crowd has seen these guys grow up, and there's a special attachment.

"Going from rugrats to young men, they've drawn people to them because they aren't superstar athletes. They've had to fight and scrap for everything. Sometimes, they've been overwhelmed, but they've done this collectively."

Saturday, the rugrats get the red-carpet treatment.

Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com