And we’re back!  Bloody pirates boarded the good ship Seattle Sports Hell and wreaked havoc, but we had our top man on the case to clean out the riffraff.  I am eternally grateful!

There isn’t much going on between now and the start of Spring Training in a couple weeks, so posting might be a little light in the meantime.  Also, I’m super busy in my everyday life, so don’t be afraid if there aren’t timely updates for the next couple/few weeks.

Over the weekend, the Husky basketball team beat the Cougars.  The game was on ESPNU, which my cable package does not have, and it also doesn’t have a way to log on and watch over the Internet (it’s a very small cable company), so I missed this game.  But, I heard the Huskies looked great, better than they have all season!

Thybulle led the way with 18 points, 6 assists, 4 steals, 3 rebounds, and a block.  Nowell, Dickerson, and Crisp all had very efficient games.  Green hit a few threes and Nahziah Carter had 11 points off the bench.  The Cougs were limited to 25% on threes, and that was that.  The Huskies coasted to an 80-62 victory.

The Huskies currently sit third in the Pac-12 at 5-3, behind Arizona at 8-1 and USC (that win over the Trojans looking better and better by the week) at 8-2.  We head into the biggest weekend of the regular season, as the Huskies host #25-ranked ASU on Thursday and #9-ranked Arizona on Saturday.  It would be season-altering if the Huskies found a way to win both of these games (or, at least, beat Zona); if you put a win over Arizona on top of their road wins against USC and Kansas, I don’t see how the NCAA Tournament could keep us out, barring a total collapse the rest of the way.  That’s three HUGE wins on our resume; but, of course, we have to get there first.

For the record, beating Arizona feels like a huge longshot.  The Wildcats were destroyed in three straight games in the Battle 4 Atlantis, but their only other defeat this entire season was a 3-point loss on the road to Colorado back in early January.  If you’re a believer in fate, you could say the Wildcats are due for another slip up (and the odds of them losing at WSU is the longest of longshots), so here’s hoping they settle for a bunch of jump shots that clang off the rim.

It’s much more likely that the Huskies end up taking out ASU, who was perfect coming into conference play, but have lost 5 of their last 9 games against the Pac-12.  Given their non-conference schedule – with wins over Kansas and Xavier – a win against ASU is still bound to look pretty impressive in the eyes of the committee.  We have to hope, of course, that the Sun Devils – immediately after losing to the Huskies – go on a nice little winning streak the rest of the way and actually make the tournament.  But, either way, if we only beat the Sun Devils this weekend, I’ll take it.

I don’t want to say it’ll be a disaster if we lose both, but it’ll be a huge disappointment.  After these games, there really aren’t any more opportunities to make an impact on our NCAA Tournament standing.  Maybe the game at Stanford, but they’ve been a very up-and-down team this year, so probably not.

Furthermore, if we lose both games, that’s pretty much it for our margin of error.  That would drop us to 5-5 in conference play, with 8 games to go (4 against the Oregon schools, 2 at home against the Mountain schools, 2 on the road in the Bay Area).  To even have a shot at the Tourney, the Huskies would have to go at least 6-2 in those games, and probably still have to win at least 2 games in the Pac-12 Tournament.  The Huskies, as presently constructed, COULD achieve that, but given their occasional offensive woes, it doesn’t seem entirely likely.

So, win 1 of 2 and live to fight another day.  Or, win 2 of 2 and punch your ticket to the NCAA Tournament right now!  Let’s go Dawgs!!!