Washington State's offensive struggles exposed in season-opening loss to Davidson: 3 takeaways

Even though the crew at Washington State University was mostly new, the scouting report facing Davidson in back-to-back seasons was not.

The Wildcats not only love the 3-pointer, but they make them - and did with 12 of them in last season’s win in North Carolina.

The rematch was Monday, and it was the same result as Davidson spoiled the Cougars’ home season opener with a 76-61 victory at Friel Court in Pullman.

Sam Brown led all scorers with 22 points. Nick Janowski added 21. And the Wildcats again made 12 3-pointers against the WSU defense.

WSU, which found out earlier in the day that projected offensive leader Ronnie Harrison would miss the game after feeling soreness in his ankle during morning shootaround, floundered offensively, making five of 24 3-pointers.

Jaylen Harrell led the Cougars with 13 points off the bench.

Here are three instant takeaways from WSU’s season-opening loss to Davidson:

1. No anchor means floating ship

The opening-night loss of Harrison, the 6-foot-8 transfer from East Texas A&M, was devastating. He is the team’s lone three-level playmaker whom defenses have to game-plan to stop.

“Ronnie is someone that gives us stability, and someone who has been there before,” Riley said.

Without him - and with point guard Lazerek Houston largely a non-factor as a scorer - the offense fired off in neutral much of the night.

WSU didn’t even score its first field goal until the 16:15 mark on Jamari Phillips’ steal and transition dunk to cut Davidson’s lead to 7-3.

Early on, Phillips and Dominik Robinson had short spurts of scoring. Then it was Casey Jones, Sebastian Akins and Harrell in the second half. Nothing was sustainable.

“We stood around, and did not get to the next action,” Riley said. “We did decent stuff defensively, but stagnation hurt us.”

2. Harrell provides brief second-half spark

After Brown continued Davidson’s perimeter-shooting onslaught with a long 3-pointer to extend his team’s lead to 47-28 with 15:24 remaining, Riley had seen enough and called timeout.

It was Harrell who spearheaded the Cougars’ next 10-0 run by scoring half of the team’s points - capping it with a 3-pointer at the 12:40 mark.

“I feel like my teammates put me in the right opportunity to do what I had to do,” said Harrell, a transfer from Providence.

Davidson’s 4:37 drought ended on Josh Scovens’ bucket as the Cougars never got closer than nine points.

Riley stuck with reserves Harrell, Akins, Robinson and Jones for longer stretches in the second half because of their energy and decisiveness.

3. Is Robinson already team’s most well-rounded post player?

One of two holdovers from last season, Robinson - the 6-foot-10 redshirt freshman who played much of his high school career at Graham-Kapowsin High School near Tacoma - continued to show he deserves ample playing time.

Robinson was one of the first players off the WSU bench in the first half, and immediately showed that he was not only the team’s best low-post scoring threat on the block - he even had a nice face-up feed to Jones for an easy bucket.

In 23 minutes, Robinson had 10 points on 5-for-9 shooting with four rebounds (two of them on the offensive glass) and two assists.

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