I’ve been out of the loop. I had no idea until Wednesday afternoon that the lowly Washington State Cougars — weeks ago — had found a new coach to guide their horrible women’s basketball team.

Blame it on my two-month vacation, or more likely on the fact that I could care less about them, but upon hearing the news, I was flabbergasted. It wasn’t like when Barry Sanders retired or anything, but still it was a shocker. The Cougs didn’t just hire any old coach. They hired June Daugherty.

Judging from my previous coverage of the Huskies’ women’s hoops teams, and even more so, upon the almost total lack of support said teams receive on campus, 97.6 percent of you probably don’t even know who Daugherty is. I’ll save you the trouble and end the guessing game.

She was our coach!

It was Daugherty who kept the Dawgs winning, and coincidentally in the NCAA Tournament, while the men’s team and football program consistently showed the rest of the Pac-10 how good they’ve become at rolling over. Nine times her teams qualified for post-season play during her 11-year tenure. She and husband and assistant coach Mike were fixtures on the Washington scene, drumming up publicity and molding the women’s program into a defensive-minded squad that were always a step (or 10) away from completing the championship puzzle.

Put in plain terms, Daugherty’s Dawgs did well. Why no one came to support the team and no national ‘buzz’ ever really surrounded them is sad, but it’s no mystery. They failed to win the games they should have and could never knock out better opponents they’d play to the ropes. That is enough being nice.

A reason the Huskies might have to watch out for the rival squad next year is one that contributed to them never pulling the big punches in seasons prior: Daugherty is obsessed with having a deep bench.

Always wanting to go 10 deep was terrible for the Dawgs. Watching them was often like watching a 100-yard marathon with 10-man teams. The substitutions never let any one player get going, and the few times when one managed to do it would be killed by a rotation. A team with good conditioning shouldn’t need to go ten deep, should it? Too many stars and none of them shine.

So Daugherty and the terrible Cougs might just turn things around. She obviously knows her basketball, and having only five nobodies might force her to run those horses ragged. Who knows, maybe a real winner will rise from the dust?

As long as they continue to get pummeled by the Dawgs, I wish Daugherty the best. As of last season, Washington has won 24 in a row against the weaklings from the East. It seems to me that UW Athletic Director Todd Turner’s new-model coach Tia Jackson will continue that streak at least this year. The Huskies return a ton of talent and experience should be enough to keep her team from losing to the Cougs, who happen to be coming off a one-win conference season.

The question I have in this entire matter, is how is Jackson going to turn the program’s financial deficits into profits? Is “buzz” really something a coach can create in women’s college basketball? Even an 11-game home winning streak couldn’t get 3,000 people to come watch this year’s Stanford game. Is Jackson going to have to rattle off 18 wins in a row to keep her job?