Behind the transformation of WSU's Jaylen Wells, whose shot is unlocking the Cougs' offense

Dec. 14—PULLMAN — Kyle Smith was wrapping up a postgame chat last week with Mike Magpayo, UC Riverside's head coach, talking about Washington State's blowout win and reminiscing on their time coaching together at previous stops.

That's when Magpayo brought up one of Smith's players, transfer forward Jaylen Wells, who had just nailed 3 of 6 3-pointers in a strong offensive outing. The Highlanders have a color-coded scouting system for closing out on opposing shooters, Magpayo explained, a scale from green to yellow to red that indicates how strongly or weakly — green for closing out hard to the best shooters, red for not bothering at all — players should contest shots.

On UC Riverside's scout, Wells was listed as yellow.

"I was like, yeah," Smith said, "that probably helped us."

As the Cougars have raced to an 8-1 start, set to put it on the line Saturday morning with a neutral-site matchup against Santa Clara in Phoenix, opponents have paid for not keeping track of Wells. He has a coach's dream attributes: 6-foot-8 frame, long arms and unselfish mentality. He's a willing rebounder and a tireless worker.

Only recently, though, has Wells unlocked the part of his game that threatens to open up Washington State's offense — his perimeter shooting. He has sunk 8 of his past 12 tries from distance. Going back a little farther, he's made 12 of his past 24. For the season, he's hit 43%, an elite mark that he engineered with his past two big games.

That matters for WSU because of its approach on offense, an inside-out strategy that relies on forwards bullying their way inside and a few shooters making enough shots to give everyone space. As Wells keeps hitting his 3s, keeps stretching the floor with his shot-making, he's making everything easier on the Cougars' offense.

"My confidence is high," Wells said. "I think it also comes with just getting used to playing at the D-I level. First games, I probably started off like 1 for 8. So just being able to get in the game more, play more minutes, just getting used to that speed and that level, you know. Taller, bigger players I'm shooting over, longer hands, taller hands. A lot of it comes with just being more comfortable."

It's a whole lot of new for Wells, who transferred from Division II Sonoma State this fall. New competition. New role. New teammates. New location, far from his home in Sacramento, California. He was injured for roughly the first month of practice. He didn't play in WSU's season-opening win over Idaho.

Much of that explains his slow start, when he couldn't get many minutes, much less make a shot. He missed three shots in 2 minutes against Prairie View. He missed two shots in 4 minutes against Mississippi State. Against Rhode Island, he scored 10 points, but he made just 2 of 7 shots — including 1 of 5 from distance.

That's when Wells entered started turning it around with 3-pointers. He hit 4 of 6 in a win over Utah Tech, went 0 for 4 in the next two games, but bounced back in the Cougars' past two wins: 3 for 6 against UC Riverside and 5 for 6 against Grambling. He's blossoming into a reliable catch-and-shoot option for WSU. The Cougars' offense looks better for it.

"It helps balance the equation," freshman forward Rueben Chinyelu said. "Just keep a good equilibrium. If you don't play this guy, this guy's open, if you overplay this guy then this guy's open. It gives us a variety of options to go through, which is kind of nice to have."

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Last December, Sonoma State head coach Rich Shayewitz turned to one of his assistants.

"Well," Shayewitz said, processing his team's loss, "we gotta enjoy him while we have him."

Sonoma State had just dropped a one-point game to Cal Baptist, December, but it was clear who the best player on the floor was: Jaylen Wells. He had scored 30 points on 9-for-12 shooting from the field, including 4 for 5 from deep. He added six rebounds and one steal. The Seawolves' season was 16 games old, and something was dawning on Shayewitz and his coaches.

Wells was playing his way to a higher level — and SSU couldn't hang on to him much longer.

That's because Wells was putting together a sterling second year at SSU, finishing with 22.4 points and 8.7 rebounds per game, shooting 52% from the field, including 44% on 3-pointers. On any given night, if Wells wasn't the best player on the court, it came as a surprise to Shayewitz, who was beginning to hear from NBA scouts.

Back then, Wells did everything for Sonoma State: scoring, rebounding, ball-handling, you name it. He played every position. Shayewitz drew up all kinds of plays for Wells, isolations and post-ups and everything in between.

"At our level, he's able to do that," Shayewitz said. "At our level, he's able to pretty much dominate the game at every position, with the ball in his hand and even without the ball. Pretty good athlete, but his length is what gives him that versatility."

"I've never really been a score-first mentality. I was just wanting to win," Wells said. "So at Sonoma, I just needed to score more, so that was the way to win."

In his second and final year with the Seawolves, Wells scored in double figures in all 30 games. He recorded six 30-point games, including a career best of 38, when he hit four 3-pointers. He finished with double-digit rebounds on 11 occasions. Sometimes he backed his guy down for a layup. Other times he faced up on the perimeter and drilled 3s off the dribble. There wasn't much he couldn't do.

The biggest improvement he made in his game, though, involved his 3-point shot. As a freshman, he connected on just 26%. A year later, he bumped it up to 44%.

"I think his confidence grew with every shot he took," Shayewitz said.

There's not much about Wells' shot that screams "elite shooter." His form is a little slow, and there's a slight hitch. When the ball comes off his hands, it doesn't spin front-to-back. It spins side-to-side. When he was missing, like he was in the Cougars' first few games of the season, the untrained eye might have wondered why he kept shooting.

That's exactly how Wells turned his shot around. He just kept shooting. In the summer of 2022, the break between his freshman and sophomore years at SSU, he put in serious time in the gym. He kept the same form — his high school trainer, Danielle Viglione, acquiesced on fixing it when she realized his shots were going in enough — but he put in the reps.

The results Wells came back with, a highly efficient shot from deep, may have surprised some. To those who knew him best, it sounded about right. In high school at Folsom High, in the suburbs of Sacramento, Viglione realized she was working with a teenager who couldn't tolerate it if he wasn't improving.

The first time Viglione and Wells worked together, she asked him about his free-throw percentage. How many can he make in a row? Wells didn't know.

During their next session, Viglione had Wells shoot 100 free throws. He made about 68.

"And I said, 'That's how you gauge,' " Viglione said. "I said, 'It's intrinsic inside of you that you want to beat your own records, not someone else's records. It's just your own records. So you want to be better than you were the day before.' And so he came back to me the next workout. He goes, 'Hey coach, I made 83.' "

Everywhere he's gone, Wells has squeezed the most out of the experience, committing himself to improving in ways new and old. It's how he ascended at Sonoma State. It's also the reason he moved on.

He shared his decision to do so with Shayewitz on March 4, a day after Sonoma State's season ended with a loss in the conference tournament semifinals. Shayewitz ate lunch with Wells in the school's cafeteria. He had to know about Wells' future: Was he planning on leaving or staying?

Wells had tears in his eyes when he answered.

"I never thought I would have to have this conversation with you, coach," Wells said, "but I'm gonna go."

"He talked to me about how he had maxed out the resources that Sonoma State could offer him — and he was 100% right," Shayewitz said. "We are a small liberal arts school that athletics is not that important here. We have one full-time strength coach that he saw three times a week for an hour. We have no nutrition program. We have no sports psychology, all of that stuff. He maxed us out. Everything that we could possibly give him, he squeezed out of this place."

With that, Wells hit the portal, where his roots in northern California aligned with the WSU coaches' connections. Smith coached nine years at Saint Mary's in Moraga, California, as did assistant Jim Shaw, who spent 2013-15 there. Fellow assistant Wayne Hunter hails from Sacramento. Smith credits his pulse on the area for hearing about Wells.

The rest Wells has made happen on his own.

"His work ethic," said Fred Wells, Jaylen's father, "is phenomenal."

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Jaylen Wells doesn't have a photographic memory — but certain things he can't help but remember. For example, he says, two or the five 3-pointers he took against Grambling State were wide open.

"I just remember it because I'm just not used to it," Wells said. "I remember I had one on the wing, and I was just like, 'There's no one near me.' "

How often did that happen at Sonoma State?

"Never," Wells said. "Every time I drove, it was like three guys."

In that way, Wells is still adjusting to playing at Washington State, where his role looks drastically different than that at Sonoma State. In Pullman, he's asked to be a catch-and-shoot shooter, a physical rebounder and a reliable defender. The last part, he and coaches agreed, is still coming along — but that's to be expected of a guy still getting his feet wet.

Wells said his mentality hasn't needed to change much as his role has. He doesn't look to score first anyway, so he hasn't needed to adjust much in that way. He doesn't take any issue with getting fewer touches.

"As long as we're winning," Wells said, "I'm just gonna do what we need to do to win."

Physically adapting has been the toughest part. That's the reason Wells couldn't make much of anything in his first few games. The opponents he's seen so far are about as talented as the ones he saw at SSU, he said, but they aren't nearly as big. It's one thing to shoot over a 6-foot-1 guard. It's another to shoot over a 6-7 wing.

"In practice, trying to get over a screen by Rueben," Wells said of the 6-11 Chinyelu, "that's not too easy."

Wells also understands he's enjoying something of a honeymoon phase at WSU, the period of time where he doesn't appear high on opponents' scouting reports, allowing him to spring free for open looks. Those days, he knows, won't last long if he keeps shooting it like he has. He was a bit miffed to hear that UC Riverside didn't respect his shooting, particularly because the Highlanders offered him when he was in the portal, but he also acknowledges it made sense — he hadn't been shooting it particularly well to that point.

But he's putting those days behind him. His name is no longer highlighted in yellow. It comes in green.