LAS VEGAS – Consider it a spell broken.

Never had Washington State won a game in the Pac-12/10 Tournament seeded lower than ninth. The 11th-seeded Cougars put that streak to rest, secured their first win in the conference tournament since 2009 and won their first since the event moved to Las Vegas, beating sixth-seeded Colorado 82-68 during Wednesday’s nightcap at T-Mobile Arena.

With the win, WSU (16-16) returns to .500 on the season and the Cougars move on to Thursday’s quarterfinal, where they’ll play third-seeded Arizona State (20-11) at 8:30 p.m. The Cougars bowed to the Sun Devils in the season finale last week in Tempe, 83-74.

In the wake of the COVID-19 spread, the game – and all others in the conference tournament – will be played under new attendance protocols implemented by the Pac-12 Wednesday that permit only essential staff, TV network partners, credentialed media and limited family members and friends to attend.

CJ Elleby, who was named to the All-Pac-12 First Team two days earlier, found his deep touch in Vegas and made 6 of 10 3-pointers to lead all scorers with 30 points – four off his career-high – and grab five rebounds. Isaac Bonton finished in double digits for the 18th consecutive game and had 15 points to go with six assists.

Colorado’s Shane Gatling scored the game’s first basket off a WSU turnover, but the Cougars, scoreless through the first 2 1/2 minutes, cleaned up their act on offense and supplemented it with some superb defense. WSU tied it at 2-2 on a short jumper from Tony Miller and held an advantage the remainder of the half, leading by as many as 14 points.

The Cougars withstood a scoring drought that lasted nearly five minutes to go into the halftime break leading by 10 points, in part because the Buffs managed to score just six points during the same stretch.

The staggering improvements the Cougars have made on the defensive end of the floor under first-year coach Kyle Smith followed them to Vegas, where they held Colorado to 10 straight 3-point misses and just 4 of 21 from beyond the perimeter.

The Buffaloes, who cruised to a 78-56 victory in the teams’ only other meeting this season, finished 21 of 57 from the field and scored just 25 points in the first half – the second-lowest total allowed in a half by WSU this season against a Pac-12 opponent.

WSU opened the second half on a 13-5 run and grabbed its biggest lead of the game – 21 points – when Elleby connected on a 3-pointer from the left elbow. Shifty Colorado guard McKinley Wright went on a personal 7-0 run that closed the Cougars’ lead to 13 points, but Jervae Robinson, a native of Aurora, Colorado, broke up a 9-0 Buffs run when he finished a layup in traffic to extend WSU’s lead to 14 points.

The final blows came from Elleby, who reached 30 points for the second time in his career on a pull-up jumper, and Miller, who built the WSU lead back to 20 points when he drew a foul on a made layup, finishing off a three-point play from the free throw line.

Miller brought the arena to life a few minutes later when he caught a pass from Pollard under the basket and challenged Evan Battey at the rim, finishing a one-handed poster dunk over the big Colorado center.

Coming off a career-high 21-point outing against ASU, Miller finished with nine points – including six in the second half - and six rebounds for the Cougars.

Colorado’s Wright had a team-high 21 points and nine rebounds, while Bey finished with 19 points and eight rebounds.