The pace is deliberate, as if Washington State coats the floor with hot tar before every game. The offense is precise but mind-numbingly patient. The defense isn’t suffocating, but it packs in to caulk every available gap.
There is method to being this methodical, to eschewing quick shots and extended pressure and jet-propelled transition dashes.
“If we play like that,” Washington State guard Derrick Low said of an up-tempo style, “teams are way more talented and athletic than us, and they’re going to run us off the court.”
Necessity, apparently, is the mother of inertia. So when No. 5 seed Notre Dame (25-7) meets the No. 4 Cougars (25-8) in the second round of the NCAA tournament on Saturday, the philosophical disparity will be near-comical, almost as if Mike Brey’s attacking, free-flowing system is confronting its evil, boring twin.
Notre Dame averages 80 points per game. Washington State surrendered 80 just once this season. Brey said after the Irish’s first-round victory in the East regional that he “never” wants his team to slow it down.
And yet they may not have a choice Saturday. And, the Irish claim, it may not matter.
“For us, yeah, we’d rather have the game at a high tempo, but we feel like we’ve proven we can win in a defensive, grind-it-out game,” Irish forward Rob Kurz said. “We’ve played a lot of games like that in the Big East where we’ve had to adjust our style.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily that we need to inflict our style on them because we’re going to run every chance we have and we’re going to make sure we get a really good shot every possession.”
Facing the Cougars places a high premium on endurance and efficiency. Coach Tony Bennett preaches an almost paradoxical doctrine of being “patient, sound, but aggressive,” as he put it Friday. Then Washington State waits for opponents’ frustration to boil over.
“We just talk about: Make them earn on every possession,” Bennett said.
No coincidence, then, that Brey accosted his team about defense and rebounding when the brackets were unveiled and Notre Dame was headed to the Denver grind house. Improving those areas would allow the Irish identity to carry over.
“One of the things rebounding did for us [Thursday night], it reminded our guys how we get to run if we rebound,” Brey said.
The Irish are banking on several unofficial dress rehearsals of this game, including most recently a 68-55 victory over St. John’s on March 19 and that tractor pull of a first-round triumph against George Mason.
In those outings, Notre Dame got shoe-horned into half-court basketball and survived. The Irish need to have that mastered Saturday if they don’t want to get booted.
“You don’t want to force things that aren’t there and get frustrated with the style of play,” Irish forward Zach Hillesland said. “But hopefully we can play defense well enough and get enough rebounds where we can push it in transition and do what we like to do.”
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bchamilton@tribune.com
