The most surprising power-conference team in America plays in the Pac-12

After Washington State beat Oregon State and Oregon on the road last weekend, Cougars players mostly acted as if that were business as usual. It was most certainly not. Washington State hadn’t swept the Oregon schools in 15 years. That was also the team’s third straight road win and fifth away from home in the Pac-12.

“I’m probably a little more surprised than they are,” coach Kyle Smith says. “They don’t really know what they’re doing because they’re blank slates in this league. They just keep surprising me.”

And everyone else. Other power-conference programs have greatly exceeded expectations — South Carolina, for instance — but none are more stunning than Washington State. Picked to finish 10th in the Pac-12 this preseason, the Cougars are 18-6 overall and sit alone in second place in the league standings going into Thursday’s game against Cal. If today were Selection Sunday, then Wazzu — which is 40th in the NET and 41st in KenPom with a 4-3 Quad 1 record — likely would make the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2008. Among power-conference schools, this is the second-longest NCAA Tournament drought behind DePaul, which last went dancing in 2004.

Smith, who’s in his fifth year in Pullman, never has finished with a losing record there and guided the Cougars to the past two NITs. But a promising roster was decimated this spring when eight contributors left. Six transferred out, including leading scorer TJ Bamba (Villanova) and forward DJ Rodman (USC), the latter of whom had declared on senior day that he was coming back to the Cougars — even jumping into Smith’s arms to celebrate on the court. (That USC is in last place in the Pac-12 and Villanova is at best on the bubble is … notable). Two other starters, Mouhamed Gueye and Justin Powell, left early for the NBA Draft. Powell went undrafted, while Gueye was taken in the second round.

Smith and his staff had to remake the team on the fly. One of the first places they looked was eight miles down the road to the University of Idaho, where power forward Isaac Jones was ready to move on after the Vandals changed coaches. Washington State tried to sign Jones out of junior college before the 2022-23 season and hosted him on a visit.

“I probably shouldn’t be this forthcoming, but Idaho out-recruited us,” Smith says. “We got involved late, and he’s a very loyal guy.”

Jones is averaging 15.5 points and 7.7 rebounds per game.

“He’s a unique player,” Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said of Jones earlier this season. “You’ve got a big who can handle the ball, get in the post multiple (ways). He has a supreme right-hand hook, and he has a soft touch.”

The Cougars mined Division II Sonoma (Calif.) State for guard Jaylen Wells (11 points per game and 44.6 percent on 3s) and the junior-college ranks for Australian big man Oscar Cluff. Meanwhile, they held on to four-star recruit Rueben Chinyelu, who had offers from Kansas, Tennessee, Florida and others. The Cougars built a relationship early with the Nigerian native through the NBA Academy Africa program and were aided in the pursuit by his fellow countryman Efe Abogidi, who played in Pullman from 2020-22. Chinyelu, who has a 7-foot-8 wingspan, has a 10.6 percent block rate that would rank top 20 in the country if he played more minutes.

Washington State entered the season ranked 299th in Division I experience per KenPom, and that was before Kansas transfer Joseph Yesufu suffered a season-ending hip injury six games in. What made everything click into place was the emergence of redshirt freshman point guard Myles Rice, whose story is almost too unbelievable to be true.

The 6-3 Rice is from the Atlanta area and played on the same high school team (Sandy Creek) as former Auburn national freshman of the year Jabari Smith Jr. Yet during his senior year, he only had offers from mid-major programs. That’s because the recruiting world was still shut down by COVID-19 restrictions. Without much else to do during that time, Smith and his assistants started scrubbing lists of top prospects and cold-called around to see where their recruitment stood. They never saw Rice play in person but extended him an offer anyway.

“I kind of did the reverse close on him,” Smith says, chuckling. “I told him, ‘You shouldn’t do this! It doesn’t make sense. From Atlanta to here? It doesn’t get much different than that.’”

But Rice wanted to test himself in a major conference, so he agreed to come to the Palouse, having never visited campus. Then Smith, who had a veteran team returning, convinced Rice to redshirt the 2021-22 season. The following summer, as Rice was readying for his debut season, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. After multiple rounds of chemotherapy during his medical redshirt year, Rice was declared cancer-free in June.

Smith calls Rice a “light bulb” for his upbeat personality, even during the toughest of times. The team took off once the coaching staff decided to put the ball in its electric guard’s hands and let him run the show. He scored 18 points in a Jan. 3 upset of Arizona, 35 in a win at Stanford and 21 in Saturday’s win in Eugene. He has been named the Pac-12 freshman of the week three straight weeks and leads the team in scoring (15.6), assists (3.8) and steals (1.8).

“His level of improvement from October to now, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Smith says.

Moving Rice to full-time point allowed Washington State to play the 6-8 Wells at shooting guard. The rest of the usual starting five sees 6-8 Andrej Jakimovski at the three, the 6-9 Jones at the four and Cluff and Chinyelu, both 6-11, splitting time at center. Sixth man Kymany Houinsou can play either guard spot at 6-7. Wazzu is the second-tallest team in the country, per KenPom.

“We look different than other teams,” Smith says. “We have some shortcomings on defense — we can’t force a turnover to save our lives — but we are hard to score against around the rim. And when we get in screening situations we can’t deal with, we’re able to switch and make things difficult.”

This breakout season is happening against the backdrop of the Pac-12 collapsing and Washington State and Oregon State being stranded on an island by their fleeing conference mates. The Cougars and Beavers will play next season in the West Coast Conference, not exactly what Smith had in mind when he left San Francisco for Pullman. (“I’ve coached in the WCC, and it looks like I’m going to again,” he says.) Wouldn’t it be something if Washington State, which trails Arizona by a game in the standings but has beaten the Wildcats in two of their past three meetings, won its first conference title since 1941 in the Pac-12’s final year? The Cougars go to Tucson on Feb. 22.

The program has only made the NCAA Tournament six times, including three since 1983. Just three coaches — George Raveling, Kelvin Sampson and Tony Bennett — have ever managed to take the Cougars to March Madness. Smith, who should be a leading candidate for national coach of the year, is trying to ensure his players don’t look too far ahead.

“It’s exciting to have an opportunity, but I also remind them: All this goes away with a bad weekend,” he says. “We still have a lot of work to do, but it’s nice to get this attention.”

The same goes for the 54-year-old Smith, who has had one of the most interesting and underappreciated coaching careers. He was Randy Bennett’s top assistant when they took over Saint Mary’s and turned that program from nothing into a national power. Smith went on to resurrect Columbia and San Francisco from the dead, using analytics and finding players no one else wanted. He’s 87-67 at Washington State, one of the hardest and historically underfunded power-conference jobs. Yet he has never coached a team to the NCAA Tournament.

“It’s awesome, and it would mean a lot,” he says of the potential of getting there this March. “But at the same time, whether we get in or not, it’s not going to define me or define this team. It’s how we handle it, how we respond to circumstances. I’ve always said this is a character-development program, and we display our character through basketball.

“We’ve got to go out and earn it. If we can stay in that mindset, we’ve got a great chance.”

Don’t be surprised to see these Cougars in the bracket.

(Top photo of Jaylen Wells: Young Kwak / AP)