What Washington State's head coach said after losing to Gonzaga

Bulldogs shut down the Cougars for 30-point victory

Washington State Cougars head coach David Riley. | Photo by Erik Smith, Myk Crawford

Gonzaga stymied Washington State to come away with an 83-53 victory Tuesday night from the McCarthey Athletic Center.

The Bulldogs (24-2, 12-1 West Coast Conference) blitzed and stifled the Cougars (11-16, 6-8 WCC) for 40 minutes, forcing 21 turnovers while holding the visitors to a season-low in the scoring column.

On the other end of the floor, the Zags relentlessly fed the ball into the post. Graham Ike led the way with 20 points on 8-of-10 shooting, as Gonzaga outscored Washington State, 50-22, in the paint and won the battle on the glass, 37-21.

Here's what Cougars head coach David Riley said after the game.

On Gonzaga's defensive effort disrupting the Cougars' offense

"Give Gonzaga credit. They have really, really good hands on defense. They swipe at the ball. They do a great job with that, but our offense is built on connecting three or four simple passes together, or connecting two ball screens or two two different actions together, and we weren't able to do that. And obviously part of that is because of their pressure, and part of that was we were a little bit rushed."

On what Gonzaga did defensively on Ace Glass (12 points, 4-of-13 shooting)

"He's obviously a big part of the defensive game plan for Gonzaga. And when you play a team as good as Gonzaga, if you try to attack them on the first action on the first side, it gets tough, and our team needs to be able to get the ball to the second side for him to have success if we're going to be able to do that."

On Washington State's game plan for defending Graham Ike

"He did a really good job kind of dicing up those double teams early. We didn't go with the right kind of force; I think that's something that we got to do. He was able to survey the floor, hit cutters. They had a really good game plan where they were bringing cutters from against our trap."

"And at the end of the day, he was comfortable, and we got to make sure that he's off balance making those passes. He's got a hand in his face making those passes, but he was making them untouched."

On recovering from Tuesday's loss

"We want to be mentally tough, and we got to show each other who we are, and that's going to be a really important film session for us coming up in a couple days to attack this the right way."

"I've been a part of teams that have played Gonzaga and started second guessing themselves after that. Seven, eight years ago, when I was at Eastern [Washington], we got our butts kicked out here, and it took us two or three games to get over it. So, it's really important for us to come in with a mindset and understand what we got to do better."

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