THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: It's not how you start, it's how you finish

Yes, yes, the Zags play in the WCC semifinals tonight in Las Vegas.

There’s a dangerous San Francisco bunch looming, it’s tough to beat any decent team three times in the same season, and all of that.

But can we briefly just look down at the Palouse, too?

Just for a minute?

It’s a crazy story.

ON THE night of January 6, Washington State wasted a 25-point scoring explosion from Tyrell Roberts, shot just 7-of-26 from behind the arc and lost 83-78 at Colorado.

That defeat dropped the Cougars to 8-6 overall and 1-2 in the Pac-12.

Prior to that, they’d opened the season 7-1, and defeated Arizona State to jump out to a nice start in the conference.

But a bad habit had developed, and in fact …

It continued that evening in Boulder.

The Cougs seemed to jump on everybody at the start of games, then wilt at some point in the second half — often right near the finish — and it was making a young and pretty talented team look kind of ordinary.

In non-conference play, WSU let halftime leads disappear in defeats to New Mexico State, Boise State and Eastern Washington.

In Pac-12 play, they followed up that road win in Tempe with a 63-61 loss to a ranked USC team at home — again, despite leading at the half.

AFTER that loss at Colorado, Cougs boss Kyle Smith was philosophical, but convinced that he had a decent team on his hands.

“We just have to keep punching,” he said then.

Despite injuries and losses to Covid and other illnesses, Smith’s gang have persevered these past couple of months.

They walloped Oregon 94-74 behind a barrage of 3-pointers on Saturday to finish the regular season 18-13 overall and 11-9 in the conference.

Maybe those numbers don’t knock you over, but the 18 wins was the Cougs’ most since 2011 and, even more shocking, the 11 wins were their best in Pac-12 play since 2007-08 — Wazzu’s last winning season in the conference.

As Smith joked after the weekend victory, “It’s like Kevin Costner (in ‘Field of Dreams’). If you build it, they will come.”

He was referring to the crowd of 4,169, which doesn’t make you think of Kentucky or Kansas — but it DID create a tremendous racket.

“I’d heard that Beasley (Coliseum) could get really loud, and the students especially were great,” Smith said.

If the coach has his way, he’d like to get the atmosphere rocking as it was in the days of Tony Bennett on the bench 15 years ago.

IS SUCH a thing really possible once again in Pullman?

Well, let’s take a closer look at the season, while the Cougs are preparing for the Pac-12 tournament later this week.

For starters, Washington State was truly competitive against almost everyone — they were overmatched only by Arizona and UCLA.

Every other game was within reach.

In fact, there’s a stunning reality here.

If the Cougs had won every game in which they led at halftime, they would have finished with a record of …

Ready for this?

They would have been 17-3 in Pac-12 and 27-4 overall.

“We kicked away some games, or we’d be talking about the (NCAA) tournament,” Smith said.

No kidding.

In addition to their 11 conference wins, they led at the half against USC (both home and away), at Colorado, at Washington, and in home games against Arizona State and Stanford.

THE ONLY non-conference game in which they trailed at the half was South Dakota State, a matchup played in Spokane.

If WSU had hung on to most of those games they controlled, we’d be asking Smith about seed lines, about what region might draw the most Coug fans, and all that fun stuff.

“There’s a lot we’ll look back on,” Smith said.

As it is, these guys had to learn the hard way how to close out games.

But they’re young, almost all of them will be returning next season, and …

You know …

Kevin Costner, right?

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Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He also writes Zags Tracker, a commentary on Gonzaga basketball which is published weekly during the season.

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”