All Cougars and Beavers must do is win

They are in the first year of their two-year basketball purgatory, hanging out in the West Coast Conference, preparing to head to Las Vegas for the postseason conference tournament as they did for nearly 25 years in their former league.

But that’s where the familiar ends. The Cougars and the Beavers are No. 3 and No. 4 seeds respectively, behind regular-season champion Portland and mid-major stalwart Gonzaga in the WCC brackets. And unlike their Pac-12 days, they know there is likely only one route to the NCAAs.

Win it all.

Either Portland or Gonzaga has won the last five WCC Tournaments. And while for most of its recent history, the WCC has been a one-bid league, the league has sent two teams in each of the three seasons. A glimmer of hope? Not really. Portland has an NCAA Net ranking of 80. Gonzaga’s is 110. Everyone else in the league falls under that.

So the mandate is clear.

“We have to win it,” said Oregon State head coach Scott Rueck, whose team comes into the postseason tournament just 12 months and a light year away from last season’s run to the Elite Eight in the Pac-12 swan song with a loaded team that scattered in the transfer portal winds. The Beavers (16-15) nailed down the No. 4 seed after winning decisively at Pepperdine and will open in the quarterfinals on Sunday, needing to win three games in three days. “You can’t count on anything else,” Rueck said.

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But OSU knows how to make a late-season push, the kind they’ve pulled off for years in the Pac. The Beavers have won seven of nine, though a road loss to St. Mary’s last Thursday night – a game in which the Beavers had a 17-point lead – dampened OSU’s momentum.

Rueck said the first run through their temporary WCC home has been “interesting.”

“You played people in the non-conference in years past, but really, these are teams you have no past with,” Rueck said. “When we got to the second half of the schedule, I felt like we were better.”

OSU does have forward Kelsey Rees and guard AJ Marotte, two seniors who stayed in Corvalis after the team’s run to the regional final a year ago, bringing some veteran leadership into this unfamiliar territory. Rees has been the Beavers’ leading scorer, averaging 13.3 points and 7.7 rebounds. She had a pair of 20-point games in wins over Gonzaga and Portland earlier in the season. Marotte led the Beavers in minutes played and is the team’s leading 3-point shooter with 43. On a team that has atypically struggled from beyond the arc, Marotte has been a savior from the perimeter.

Washington State (19-12) finished with a 14-6 record, the program’s best-ever conference record. After opening the WCC season with five wins in six games, the Cougars have won seven of their last nine games. Those two loses were to Gonzaga in overtime and to Portland by five points. WSU is 0-4 against Portland and Gonzaga this season.

But they are getting healthier with the return of 6-foot-6 sophomore Alex Covill, who hasn’t played since January 27. Her absence gave players such as freshman Dayana Mendes some valuable playing time, confidence and experience. Mendes finished the season with three double-doubles and three conference Freshman of the Week awards.

“Alex is getting close. We hope that everything is going to be full-go by the time we start the tournament,” said Cougars head coach Kamie Ethridge of Covill. “The biggest thing right now is getting rest for our big-minute players.”

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Led by newly minted All-WCC first-teamer Tara Wallack – the team’s lone senior – and second-teamer Eleonora Villa, Ethridge, who earned a one-year contract extension on Tuesday (locking her in through 2030-31), sees a team that can challenge for the title and a chance to make the NCAA field for the fourth time in the last five years.

“We still think we can get better,” Ethridge said. “I like our chances against anybody in the league. I hate that we dropped a couple of those games, that we couldn’t finish those games (against Gonzaga and Portland). We are young and it’s taken a minute for us to get a little more solid. But it’s a moment for us to have a chance to get into the NCAA Tournament.”