The Thursday defeat to Utah was all kinds of bad. That brought us to a season sweep, which is frustrating, because I seem to remember Utah being a poor matchup for us for the last few years now. Upon further review, that makes 6 losses in a row, and 9 of 12 since Utah joined the conference, a lot of those defeats being pretty ugly for the Dawgs. So, yeah, they continue to be our kryptonite. The less said about that game, the better.
That brought Washington’s losing steak to 3 games, and put all the pressure on the remaining regular season schedule, as well as a moderate amount of pressure on the Pac-12 Tournament (pressure that will only continue to grow with every regular season loss). As it stands right now, the Huskies are among the First Four Out in most prominent Bracketology editions this morning, and that’s only because we were able to take care of business against Colorado.
The Huskies decided to change things up and share a group outing to see the Black Panther movie that came out over the weekend. Emboldened, with an opportunity to forget all their problems of the last two weeks, the Dawgs came out on fire against the Buffaloes, beating them 82-59 on the night UW retired Isaiah Thomas’ jersey. It was a perfect night.
Thybulle had a monster offensive night, Crisp continued to suck balls from beyond the arc (hitting his first shot, then missing his next 4; the worst thing in the world is a bad shooter hitting his first shot, leading him to believe he’s got something going that night). After a string of poor performances, Dominic Green got the start over Jaylen Nowell; Nowell still had 31 minutes off the bench and had a solid game. Green, on the other hand, hit 3/4 from long distance and continues to be our best sharp-shooting threat; very deserving of starter’s minutes. Naz Carter continues to make strides, and should compete to be this team’s starting point guard next year (hopefully supplanting Crisp and his poor shooting). And Dickerson had a nice game after being plagued by fouls and missed shots against Utah.
As always, there’s a lot to already be happy about with this season of Husky basketball. We’ve officially doubled our win total from a year ago, and quadrupled our conference win total. That’s Coach of the Year material right there, no doubt about it. But, there’s still more to get. We go on the road to play the Bay Area schools this week, and we NEED to avenge our previous loss to Stanford. Cal is terrible, so it would be a huge upset to drop that one on Saturday, but the real concern is the Cardinal. They looked to be a very poor matchup for us a month ago, and I can’t imagine they’ve gotten a whole lot worse in the subsequent month. The Huskies need to dig deep, avoid careless turnovers, and rebound like their lives depend on it. After this, we’ve just got the two home games against the Oregon schools, then it’s Pac-12 Tourney time. Every game is vitally important from here on out. Going 4-0 would put us in a great position to make life a lot easier.