After the Washington State women’s basketball team began the 2019-20 by winning its first four games, it might have been difficult to envision the season’s eventual conclusion — an eight-game losing streak and an 11-20 overall mark.

Second-year coach Kami Ethridge feels an excessively tough schedule was a factor in stopping her team’s momentum and wearing the players down.

“I think we either had the first or the second hardest schedule in the country, and that was a mistake on our part in the sense of the preseason nonconference schedule,” Ethridge said. “It was too tough for where we are in rebuilding our program. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t have scheduled quite as hard in the nonconference.”

No. 2 Baylor broke WSU’s early winning streak with an 89-66 domination at the Paradise Jam in the Virgin Islands in November. The Cougs went 0-3 that weekend, never again winning more than two games in a row the rest of the way.

They met their end last week at the hands of the 14th-ranked Oregon State Beavers, who bested them 73-58 in both teams’ regular-season finale March 1, then scored an 82-55 rout in the first round of the Pac-12 tournament Thursday at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas.

Standout Wazzu senior Chanelle Molina struggled with a then-unspecified injury late in the season, sitting out the first meeting with Oregon State before returning to provide 10 points and four rebounds in a 3-for-11 showing from the field in the league tournament game.

“She just kind of tweaked her knee in a warm-up (before) the (first) Oregon State game and basically couldn’t run without having a pretty severe limp,” Ethridge explained. “It was all structurally really sound, and she just needed a couple of days to be off of it, and in that four or five days from the first game to the second, she didn’t really practice with us. She was a little rusty based on the fact that she hadn’t practiced much before that game, but she got to play.”

The Cougs’ other senior leader, Borislava Hristova, provided 19 points in her final collegiate game to finish with 2,269 points — the most of any WSU basketball player in history, male or female.

Ethridge predicted Hristova will “sign with a prestigious agent shortly” to pursue a career in the pro ranks.

“She will have a great professional career starting off in Europe somewhere,” Ethridge said of Hristova, who hails from Bulgaria. “She’s very sought-after in the European league.”

Gratitude toward Molina and Hristova has been a running theme in Ethridge’s interviews, and she sounded that note once more in looking back on the season.

“I just can’t say enough about our senior leadership in Chanelle and Bobi,” she said. “I think those two players gave their heart and soul to the younger players and to this program. They really led the way in fighting and showing up every day and always giving everything they had to try to be successful.”

Looking forward, Ethridge pointed to the signing of 6-foot-4 Canadian Jessica Clark to next year’s team as a significant boost for the Cougs, along with the commitment of at least one more promising player whose name she could not disclose. She also noted Northern Colorado transfer Krystal Leger-Walker, who had to sit out this year because of eligibility regulations, should see playing time next season.

The Cougs will have two weeks of offseason training before the school year ends, then six to eight weeks of practice during the summer.

“When you take over a program that basically had seven players a year ago, it basically is going to take multiple recruiting classes to get enough depth and enough talent to start being competitive in the Pac-12,” Ethridge said. “... As we’re building this program, it generally takes a couple of years. We’re building toughness and getting better leadership and becoming better. Once you get momentum, it’s hard to stop, so I’m excited about the future.”