Washington State’s first regular season under the direction of head coach David Riley ended on a two-game win streak thanks in-part to a 90-83 win over Pepperdine on Saturday night.

The Cougars’ record moves to 18-13 overall with a 4-7 record in road games. WSU’s ball movement was a highlight of the performance, racking up 26 assists, the program’s most since 2018. WSU were also prolific in shooting, making a season-high of 35 field goals on 74 attempts.

“This is not an easy place to come in and play on senior night,” Riley said following the win, “and we stuck together for 40 minutes. I’ve been preaching 40 minutes for a really long time. There were stretches where we didn’t do the right stuff. They went on some scoring runs, we fouled some shooters, but overall we kept our composure and and I think that showed statistically in the assists in the turnovers. We strung together some good runs defensively as well.”

Ethan Price and Dane Erikstrup led the Cougars with 15 points a piece. Erikstrup also contributed a career-high 12 rebounds, netting his second double-double of the year. Rihards Vavers and ND Okafor also posted their best scoring performances of the season off the bench, contributing 12 and 13 points respectively. The WSU bench outscored the Pepperdine bench 35-6 on the night.

“That second unit was loud. They were talking, they were doing everything right,” Riley noted. “They were executing the game plan. It was really great to see that translate to us, you know, winning 35 to six, off the bench.”

With the regular season complete, Washington State have secured the No. 6 seed in the West Coast Conference tournament. Their first game in that competition will be Saturday, March 8, at 8:30 p.m. PT against the winner of a matchup between Loyola Marymount and either Pacific or San Diego.

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