Washington State’s 1,700-acre campus sits in the midst of the rolling hills of eastern Washington, surrounded by wheat fields on every side. Pullman’s airport is serviced by one airline, and only flies to and from Seattle.

Wazzu junior guard Noah Williams confirms what appears obvious based only on a cursory Google Earth search: “There’s literally nothing to do in Pullman.”

With the exception of two magical years under Tony Bennett, the men’s basketball program has rarely made winters exciting in the rural college town. Washington State has made the men’s NCAA tournament just six times in program history, most recently in 2008. In the KenPom era (since 1997), WSU has finished worse than 200th on the analytics site as many times (three) as it has finished in the top 50. Before coach Kyle Smith’s arrival from San Francisco in 2019, the program hadn’t finished in the top half of KenPom’s 350-plus team rankings nationally in six years, by far the longest streak among high-major teams.

In addition, Washington State has the smallest men’s basketball budget among “Power 6” (Power 5 plus Big East) teams, per a 2020 analysis by Three Man Weave. The season before Smith arrived in Pullman, Wazzu averaged under 2,500 fans per game, by far the lowest among the “Power 6.”

All of this is to say that Washington State isn’t to be good at men’s basketball. It’s widely considered by many in the industry to be the hardest high-major job in the country. And while the Cougars are still far from where Smith hopes they’ll be one day, it’s hard not to laud the improvement in a relatively short period of time. In Year 1 under the 52-year-old, WSU jumped 80 spots in KenPom and won five more games than it did in the season before, finishing .500 for the first time in seven years. And despite the early pro departure of star wing CJ Elleby, now a Portland Trail Blazer, the Cougars jumped up another 49 spots in 2020–21, to No. 78. It was Wazzu’s best KenPom finish in a decade.

Now, the Cougars enter 2021–22 with something relatively foreign to the program: expectations. A young core that features Williams, Nigerian big man Efe Abogidi and talented young forward Dishon Jackson returns, and a touted group of newcomers headlined by four-star recruit Mouhamed Gueye and top transfer guard Michael Flowers join the fray. The WSU roster is in better shape after two years with Smith than anyone could have anticipated—even Smith says they’ve “outkicked [their] coverage” in recruiting. How? It all ties back to a -style approach honed through rebuilds he has engineered across the country.