Cougars cruise, stifle Winthrop to turn tie game into rout

DENVER -- They were a mile above sea level, yet the way the Washington State and Winthrop basketball teams huffed and puffed through the first 20 minutes of their NCAA Tournament opener one might have thought they were on the upper flanks of Everest.

Halfway through this climb Thursday night, the fourth-seeded Cougars took away all the bottled oxygen. They turned back their gassed partner. They kept going.

Needing more attitude than altitude adjustment, WSU pulled out of a halftime tie and crushed the 13th-seeded Eagles 71-40, advancing to a second-round pairing Saturday against Notre Dame in the East Regional.

"I said at halftime, 'You're either scared or being overconfident and you better figure out which one it is,' " Cougars coach Tony Bennett said.

WSU (25-8) chose door No. 2 at the Pepsi Center and slammed it shut in the face of the Big South champions (22-12).

From a 29-29 halftime tie, the Cougars scored 25 of the first 29 points of the next half.

They limited Winthrop to 11 points after intermission.

They held the Eagles to a season-low final score, seven fewer than their next-worst outing.

They held their opponent to 30.8 percent shooting for the game, an extra-chilly 16.7 in the second half.

"A couple of times I looked at the score, and I took it as a challenge to keep that 'D' up and it was, 'Let's see how far we can go,' " WSU forward Robbie Cowgill said. "It was kind of fun to do."

Teammate Aron Baynes also had his moments on offense, with the 6-foot-10 junior center supplying a game-high 19 points, hitting all nine shots he attempted, three of them dunks. Balancing out the attack, Kyle Weaver and Cowgill added 14 points each, Derrick Low chipped in 11 points, and Taylor Rochestie passed around 10 assists.

For the second consecutive year, the Cougars have made the cut to 32. They also find themselves one shy of tying the school record for victories in a season held by the 2007 and 1941 teams.

To get there, it was too easy and too hard.

The first half settled nothing. The teams were never more than four points apart. The leading scorer for each side, Winthrop's Michael Jenkins and Low, didn't have a point.

"Maybe we want to do so well it was a little tense," Low said.

Bennett pulled aside his senior guard, a 14.1 scorer entering this postseason encounter, and suggested otherwise.

"I just challenged him to 'Don't go out like this,' " the coach said. "I thought he was a little lackluster."

Low didn't know it, but he also was a Winthrop defensive target.

Sitting in the stands and conducting his pregame radio show 90 minutes before tipoff, Winthrop coach Randy Peele laid out the following game plan against the Cougars: 1) Go after Low on defense, using the extra-long reach of 6-5 sophomore forward Mantoris Robinson to frustrate him; and 2) funnel the ball to 6-7 senior forward Taj McCullough and utilize his quickness.

Peele got what he asked for.

While Low was invisible for the half, McCullough did as instructed, coming up with 15 of his team-high 17 points.

"Whoever guarded that guy in the first half didn't do a very good job," Cowgill pointed out, smirking. "OK, it was me in both halves. He sort of abused me in the first half."

What Winthrop didn't count on was Jenkins disappearing for the entire game. A 14.3 scorer, the senior guard provided just two points. He got in immediate foul trouble, drawing two personals in the first seven minutes while trying to guard Weaver, and sat out the rest of the first half. When he got back on the court, he had Rochestie in his face wherever he went.

"I was just trying to be as pushy as I could be," Rochestie said.

There was a lot of that going around. The Cougars scored the first nine points of the second half, making the deadlock a distant memory.

After emerging from the locker room, a paralyzed Winthrop didn't make the scoreboard change again until McCullough stole a Weaver pass and raced in for a two-handed jam with 13:35 left to play, leaving his team behind 38-31. It was only a momentary reprieve.

A game that counted 13 lead changes and was tied eight times turned way out of control at this point.

Passing the final three-minute mark, the shell-shocked Eagles had collected just five points to show for the half before starting guard Chris Gaynor fired up a 3-pointer that nestled in, drawing jeers from the crowd and making the score 67-37.

"In my heart, I don't think there is any question this team overachieved," Winthrop's Peele said after all the damage had been done. "The sad part is I've got four seniors and the terms they're going out on breaks your heart. You all learn lessons in life."

In this case, the Cougars discovered they could take 20 minutes to get a deep breath and then exhale.