Arizona Defeats Cougars

The Washington State University Cougar men's hoop team came into their game with Arizona knowing they needed to win to enhance their slim NCAA tournament chances but instead, the Wildcats defeated the Cougars, 79-70 in Tucson. With the loss, the Cougars drop to 7-7 in conference play and 17-9 overall.

Wazzu came out strong in the game's first two minutes, taking a quick 4-2 lead on buckets from junior forward DeAngelo Casto and sophomore Brock Motum, but Arizona went on a 11-0 run to open a 13-4 lead. From that point on in the first half, the Cougars were never able to get closer than five points to the Wildcats. Junior guard Klay Thompson hit a trey to close the gap to 22-17 and sophomore point guard Reggie Moore hit a pair of free throws to make it 24-19 in favor of Arizona, but the Wildcats went into the locker room with a 41-33 advantage.

The Cougars were scoreless for the first 3:31 of the half as Arizona opened up a 17-point lead. But Wazzu fought back as Thompson got hot from the field and almost single-handedly brought Wazzu back to being down only eight points at 56-48 after Thompson buried a three-ball. Arizona did not falter though and held off the Cougars' numerous comeback attempts, keeping at least a five-point margin the rest of the way.

Thompson led the Cougars in scoring with 30 points while Casto tossed in 14 points and Moore added 10 points.

NOTES

- Arizona hit 24 of 26 free throws but Wazzu holds the Pac-10 conference record - making all 28 of their free throws against Oregon on January 17, 2009.

Washington State University continues their Pac-10 season with a game against Arizona State at 11AM on Saturday, February 19, in Tempe.

+++++++sponsored by Giant Release+++++++++

Attention COUGAR fans and well-wishers! The athletic season is here and advertisers are like quarterbacks - how would you like to be the quarterback who threw the game-winning pass that was caught by 30+ million unduplicated consumers in the youth 12-17 and male 18-49 demographic markets through an integrated partnership that offers entrance to top web portals? You are no dummy, so of course you would. Website owners are like the receivers who, in collaboration with their experienced online media veteran teammates at online media consultancy Giant Release, can help make that diving touchdown catch to win the game. The quarterbacks at GR can provide the advantages your website is seeking during this upcoming athletic season with their exclusive selection of genre-specific top-tier games, entertainment, male lifestyle, action and college sports content. The season is about to begin, don't to be a benchwarmer.