After the break-up of the Pac-12 Conference as everyone knew it, the annual Washington-Washington State football game was preserved right away and now it appears that at least one basketball matchup each season will be held involving these state rivals.
College basketball analyst Rocco Miller has reported that the UW and WSU basketball teams, each with new coaches, will. meet on Wednesday, Dec. 18, at Alaska Airlines Arena and a return match will be held the following season in Pullman, to be determined.
A UW official couldn’t readily confirm this, but maintaining an annual non-conference basketball connection would seem important to both schools, with the Huskies headed to the Big Ten while the Cougars will remain as part of the remnants of a Pac-12 trying to rebuild its membership.
With the firing of Mike Hopkins, former Utah State coach Danny Sprinkle now heads up the UW basketball program, while the Cougars, after losing Kyle Smith to Stanford, hired David Riley from Eastern Washington. Both programs have almost completely new rosters following these coaching changes.
The Huskies and Cougars haven’t met as non-conference opponents since the 1960s, when they were separated by the break-up of the Pacific Coast Conference before becoming members of the precursor conference lineups that evolved into the Pac-12.
In their final Pac-12 season together, the basketball teams split their home-and-away series, with the Huskies winning 74-68 in Pullman after losing 90-87 in overtime in Seattle. WSU has captured seven of the past 10 games between the rivals.
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