WITH RIVALS WASHINGTON and Gonzaga both making the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and Virginia — coached by former Washington State head coach Tony Bennett — clinching its first trip to the Final Four, Cougar fans could be excused for sitting this whole thing out — fatigued by WSU’s 11-21 record in 2018-19 that added to a now 11-year absence from March Madness.

As one of those long-suffering fans forced to witness the program fruitlessly wander the wheat fields of the Palouse for the past decade and change since Bennett’s departure after two trips to the tourney, including the Sweet 16 in 2008, I feel encouraged.

Encouraged that first-year WSU Athletic Director Pat Chun made the move to cut ties with previous head coach Ernie Kent soon after the Cougs lost in the opening round of the Pac-12 Tournament for the 10th straight season.

Kent had great success at Oregon in the early 2000’s, sending a host of players to the NBA including Blaine’s Luke Ridnour, and making it to the Elite 8 round of the NCAA tournament. But he was anything but elite on the Palouse, going 58-98 and 22-69 in Pac-12 play in five seasons. Kent’s hiring by former WSU AD Bill Moos, his old boss at Oregon, felt uninspired and Kent’s style of run-and-gun basketball was never a fit when matched against Pac-12 teams employing similar methods with better talent.

Rolling over Kent’s contract and adding an extra year three separate times after losing seasons also wasn’t a very visionary or financially efficient move by Moos.

Optimism reigns

But a cautious sense of optimism was kindled inside long-suffering fans of Washington State men’s basketball with the hiring of Kyle Smith, formerly of San Francisco, to be the 19th head coach in program history.

Smith was formally introduced at a press conference in Pullman on Monday.

He’s already held practices with a focus on improving WSU’s dreadful defense which ranked 330th out of 353 Division I teams in total defense in 2018-19.

Smith is fixated on statistical analysis, assigning number values to more than 50 statistical categories during five-on-five portions of practice and in games. Film captures everything, with cameras set up all over the court, as is commonplace in practice facilities across the NBA.

Smith spoke to the Solving Basketball podcast last November about his methodologies. That interview can be found at tinyurl.com/PDN-CoachPod.

“It’s an attempt to quantify everything,” Smith said of his ratings… . Giving value to everything that happens in our program and everything that happens on the court,” Smith said on the podcast. “Basically, our own internal efficiency rating based on what we think will help us win.”

Smith’s background as an assistant coach under Randy Bennett at Saint Mary’s from 2001-10 also is encouraging.

Smith said he looks for “six-tool guys who can dribble, pass, drive, shoot, defend and rebound,” and so does everybody else.

But he helped the Gaels recruit Australians Patty Mills and Matthew Delladova and found diamonds in the rough in big men Diamon Simpson and Omar Samhan as Saint Mary’s made three NCAA tourney trips.

Discovering and developing international players such as the Boston Celtics’ Aron Baynes, and under-the-radar talent was a hallmark of Bennett’s success on the Palouse. The inability to recruit those kinds of players under Ken Bone and Kent loomed large in their departures.

“I’ve kind of built an entire career on that,” Smith said of finding lesser-known players. “We want guys where we’re at. You know, this is a destination. Like I’m choosing a school. This is basically your biggest offer… Tony Bennett, really specifically when he was a Washington State, is a guy like that. Some of the guys that he was taking were those odd shaped, Robbie Cowgill, you know 6’10” 190 pound centers… I think guys like that, we studied really hard. They just have their own ideas on what makes a good player.”

His last two San Francisco teams each won at least 20 games with a fanatical focus on defense, specifically defending the 3-point shot and grabbing defensive rebounds.

“The 3-pointer is worth too much [to not shoot it offensively or guard it defensively],” Smith said on the Solving Basketball podcast. “It’s ugly to watch when team’s cast it up there so many times but it makes sense.”

And Smith’s offense is intriguing, incorporating elements of the Princeton Offense devised by longtime coach Pete Carill.

Carill’s brand of read and react motion leads to open shots and back-door cuts. Princeton famously upset defending national champ UCLA in the mid-1990s. Carill finished out his career as an assistant on the Sacramento Kings in the late 1990s and early 2000s, imparting his wisdom on a team that was a treat to watch.

Smith’s job won’t be easy and he’ll have an uphill fight against fan apathy. Attendance hovered at around 20 percent of capacity in 11,610-seat Beasley Coliseum (and that was being very generous). His first task is getting Jeff Pollard to re-think a transfer and hope that freshman CJ Elleby’s NBA draft appraisal leads him back to Pullman next season.

But Smith seems like a much better fit for Pullman than Kent or Bone ever were.

Now it’s time to recruit, analyze and defend. And eventually to win more often than we lose.