Tag Archives: Keion Brooks

Husky Basketball Is Falling Apart

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Now, in all fairness, just because the rats are evacuating this sinking ship that is Husky Men’s Basketball doesn’t mean it’s bad that they’re gone.

Jamal Bey, for instance, is out of eligibility (thank Christ). He was a colossal disappointment for the duration of his Husky career. Langston Wilson has opted to transfer, but he was often foul-prone and never really developed a consistent offensive game. Jackson Grant is also leaving, but he couldn’t crack a weak front court. Tyler Linhardt is apparently a guy who was here, but I know nothing about him since he hardly ever played.

Then, Cole Bajema announced he was leaving, but that feels like addition by subtraction. He’s another supposedly-good three-point shooter who was streaky as all get-out. His good games were SEVERELY outnumbered by the ones where he was anonymous to outright atrocious (you shouldn’t have as many games as he has when he went 0 for 6 or 1 for 7, when you’re supposedly an elite outside shooter). It sounds like P.J. Fuller is also leaving, but with an expanded role, he did exactly zero with the opportunity (after having a solid 2021-2022 season).

And then you’ve got Keion Brooks and Noah Williams, who it sounds like are on the fence. Brooks was easily the best player on last year’s .500 team, but that’s not saying a whole lot. He has one year of eligibility left, and I don’t know why this is even a question. Why on God’s green Earth would he stay at Washington? Why wouldn’t he go somewhere where he actually has a chance to play some Tournament ball? I can sort of see why Williams might stick around; he’s a local kid who spent most of this past season injured. I don’t know if he has any value on the open market right now, unless he wants to go to a smaller school just to play a lot of minutes and fill out his stats. The thing is, if he’s healthy, he’ll have every opportunity to do that here, so why not just stay?

What kills me now, though, is hearing that Keyon Menifield has announced he’s leaving, after recently announcing he was coming back. He was far and away the most promising and exciting player on last year’s squad, and it’s truly devastating that he won’t be back. But, again, I get it. I loved watching him; he was fun as hell on the court. But, he’s never going to win here. He’s not from here. There are no ties whatsoever keeping him a Husky. It’s brutal, but that’s what you get when you refuse to fire a lame duck in Mike Hopkins.

Who does that leave us with? Two okay big men in Braxton Meah and Franck Kepnang (the latter coming off of a serious injury) and Koren Johnson (the other freshman guard who wasn’t quite as good as Menifield, but still looked promising last year). We have a couple of incoming freshman I’m assuming won’t reneg on their committment. And, I guess, we’ll have a whole new slate of underwhelming incoming transfer players no one else in college basketball wanted.

This just sucks. It’s not like I was even remotely excited about Husky basketball next year, but I dunno, at least we would’ve had Menifield. I can only imagine how big of an impact he’ll have in his second full season at the college level. I hope he kills it on his new team. I can totally see him being a star in the Big Dance next year.

Mike Hopkins Will Not Be Fired At This Time

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As expected, the Huskies lost in the opener of the Pac-12 tournament. It was the very first game of the set, and I immediately stopped paying attention beyond that moment. *Checks notes ESPN.com* it looks like Arizona defeated UCLA to take the conference crown in a slight upset. Those are easily the best two teams in the Pac though, so don’t be surprised if they go relatively far. I was surprised to see USC as a 10-seed, after their pitiful showing in the conference tourney; I was less surprised to see ASU as an 11-seed play-in team. They’re not great, but they have a great win here and there.

This isn’t about the rest of the conference, though. This is about YOUR 16-16 Washington Huskies. It was announced over the weekend that Mike Hopkins would be returning. Normally, you don’t need to release a statement confirming someone still has his job when he’s got multiple years left on his contract. But, given the discourse of late – and the disappointing results we’ve seen since last making the NCAA Tournament in 2019 – it really felt like the Huskies were set to make a change.

As has been discussed, though, Washington still owes him a combined $6.3 million over the next two seasons. That by itself isn’t enough to dictate inaction, but when you throw in Jimmy Lake’s figure (over $6 million for the next two years), all his fired football assistants (and Hop’s basketball assistants), the cost of a new basketball coaching staff, and all the raises Kalen DeBoer and his staff have received after just one season (not to mention all the NIL money being raised to start paying these players, on the football team especially), there’s only so much a school like Washington can reasonably hope to do.

I wouldn’t call Washington a “mid-major”, but I would say we are a tier between mid-majors and true power five schools. We don’t have the reach of these national programs like Alabama, Ohio State, Notre Dame, and the like. We don’t have the fans attending these games, nor do we have the television numbers to even remotely compete. But, we’re not chopped liver either. What we’ve come to terms with is that Washington is a football school. That’s not a knock; it’s not a bad thing. But, we’re NOT a basketball school. We’re not trying to be all things to all sports. We’re (smartly, rightly) putting all of our chips into the football basket. That’s where the bulk of our boosters live, that’s where the bulk of the money in college athletics lives, and that’s where we’ve traditionally made the biggest sporting impact (all apologies to the rowers and whatnot, in the lesser sports who win championships to zero acclaim).

So, the money is going to football. We’re shooting our shot – so to speak – on the football team making a serious run at the playoffs in 2023. And, somewhat as a consequence, we’re letting the basketball program stagnate under Mike Hopkins, either until his contract runs out, or until he becomes cheap enough to be fired without having to eat an unreasonable sum.

I thought the Hopkins debacle was all summed up perfectly over at UW Dawg Pound. I was happy to learn that Jamal Bey is, indeed, done with college basketball. I was a little dismayed to learn that even though he was celebrated on Senior Day, Cole Bajema is planning to return. Also, I find it incredibly interesting to discover we’re looking to convince Keion Brooks to come back.

Langston Wilson entered the transfer portal – to no one’s shock – and there might be others looking to leave. But I really wonder what this team might look like if most-everyone came back. Not that I think we’d be world beaters, or even contenders for the conference title, but it’s been exceedingly rare for a Mike Hopkins team to have any semblance of continuity. He had it in 2019 – again, with mostly holdovers from Romar’s regime – and we actually did something of value for once. Not that I think lightning would strike twice, but you never know.

I want to have strong feelings about the Huskies keeping Mike Hopkins, because I like Husky basketball. I like it when we’re good, when Hec Ed is rocking and rolling, and when we’re making our presence felt on a national stage. Winning that game in the NCAA Tournament in 2019 was a truly magical experience, and I want more of that!

But, I’m just so God damned beaten down. The atrocious Mike Hopkins “offense”. The zone defense that couldn’t catch a cold. His impotent sideline antics. Our piddling assistant coaching staff. Our non-existent local recruiting abilities.

I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve been spoiled as a Husky basketball fan. I jumped on the bandwagon at peak Romar era. Even his most mediocre teams were somewhat interesting. He always had at least one or two interesting guys. And while his offense wasn’t any sort of great shakes, at least he had players with real offensive abilities. Guys who could drive the lane, create for themselves, or kick out to a bevy of three-point shooters.

There’s nothing interesting about the guys Hopkins has brought in, other than Terrell Brown. There’s truly nothing interesting about the transfer portal, now that we know what it really is. It’s just one more way to lose your very best players, while replacing them with lesser rejects who couldn’t hack it on relevant teams.

So, you know, I’ll go through the motions of paying attention to the Huskies when they’re on TV. But, I’m not getting my hopes up. We’ll continue to underwhelm in 2023/2024, and if Hop is still here on a final lame-duck season, that’ll be a disaster of all disasters. This is going to hurt his ability to recruit, his ability to keep our “committed” guys, and probably any chance of putting out a non-embarrassing product on the court. This could get REALLY ugly.

The last thing we wanted after Hopkins won those back-to-back Pac-12 Coach of the Year awards was for him to get poached to a bigger program. Who knew it would’ve been the best possible outcome for all involved? Certainly for us, but also for Hopkins. Ironically, the Syracuse head coaching gig just opened up for next season (for the first time in nearly 50 years). Maybe Hop can one day get hired on to be an assistant again.

This Stupid Husky Basketball Season Is Finally Almost Over

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The regular season limped to a close last night, with the Huskies falling 93-84 to the Cougars en route to getting swept in this season’s Apple Cup series. We are 16-15 (8-12 in conference) and it’s now our fourth straight campaign without a post-season berth. We’re currently slotted in as the 8th seed in the Pac-12 Tournament next week, which means at best we could advance to the second round, where we’ll get destroyed by top seeded UCLA. But, I’m expecting we’ll lose in that first round, saving everyone the embarrassment of another double-digit defeat at the hands of the Bruins.

It’s been a VERY discouraging last week or so, as we also had the barn doors blown off of us against Stanford over the weekend. They’re one of the worst teams in the conference, and it’s sad that we couldn’t even put up a fight. There’s no good reason why we should be so mediocre; I find it difficult to pinpoint the reason, that’s for sure. Is it lack of talent? Is it poor coaching/development? Either way, that falls at the feet of Mike Hopkins, in the hottest of seats as he closes out his sixth season. He has two more years left on his deal, earning him $6.3 million.

For those who say, “Easy, fire him and buy him out of his contract,” it’s not exactly so simple. We also just got done paying Jimmy Lake $3.2 million to sit on his ass in 2022. Lake will also earn a combined $6.7 million over the next two years (we’ll see if we get to recoup that in any way, shape, or form as he finds work elsewhere), and that’s not even getting into whatever money we owe his assistants, not to mention the current football coaching staff (who have already gotten raises after one season), nor mentioning the NEW basketball staff that we’ll have to bring in to replace Hopkins.

I understand we’re talking about a university bringing in billions of dollars, and I’m not saying the Huskies should keep Hopkins. But, I would understand if we don’t want to keep compounding bad money decisions.

Here’s the thing, though: Mike Hopkins hasn’t shown he’s capable of doing anything other than win with Romar’s players his first two years here. He hasn’t recruited successfully from the high school ranks (nor does he really seem all that interested in it). He’s largely flopped with the transfer portal, other than lucking into Terrell Brown’s final year of eligibility. He CLEARLY has no idea how to craft a competent offense, other than “let guys shoot jumpers with defenders in their faces” (and, again, he’s failed in actually finding quality shooters to employ this asinine strategy). And his forte – defense, specifically a tricky zone defense – has also largely stunk, other than the two years he had Thybulle running the show (again, a Romar recruit). Here’s a thought: if your zone defense is so difficult to master, that you need multiple seasons of continuity to perfect it, then maybe you shouldn’t get stuck in a swirling toilet bowl of trying to reload the roster via the transfer portal every year.

I’ll say this: the transfer portal is a total disaster. Anyone who’s even remotely worth a damn isn’t IN the transfer portal in the first place. He’s locked himself down on a quality team. These are REJECTS, who couldn’t hack it elsewhere. So, what makes Hopkins think he has the special sauce to gather them all together here and win at a rate necessary to make the NCAA Tournament? We had our best roster in ages in 2021-2022 – with the aforementioned Terrell Brown leading the way – and we still couldn’t win more than 17 games.

The truth of the matter is, on this year’s squad, there was never anyone even close to Brown’s abilities in creating his own shot, leadership, ball handling, or determination to take this team where it needed to go. So, there was no way in hell we were ever going to IMPROVE over last year’s total. It’s, therefore, no surprise we’re at 16 wins and probably done.

Keion Brooks gave it a hell of an effort – averaging a team-high 17.8 points, to go along with 6.9 rebounds, while shooting 43% from the floor – but clearly we needed more around him. Freshman Keyon Menifield was a breath of fresh air, though predictably inconsistent – as you’d expect. Nevertheless, he finished averaging 10 points, 3 assists, and 1.1 steals per game. Koren Johnson was another promising freshman guard, whose playing time increased as the season went on.

But, this team was also beset with injuries. With the margin for error razor thin, this was the worst-case scenario for the Huskies. Big man Franck Kepnang only appeared in 8 games. Prized transfer Noah Williams has only appeared in 14 games. And apparently P.J. Fuller has been dinged up lately (he’s also been wildly disappointing when he’s been out there, which makes me wonder if he’s been dealing with these injury issues all season).

The bad news is that Brooks has no more eligibility left. The good news is, neither does Cole Bajema or Langston Wilson (who have NOT been worth a damn at all). The worst news I could possibly imagine, though, is that somehow Jamal Bey still has (at least) a year of eligibility left. Will he finally get the hint and transfer? God I hope so. Giving him 26+ minutes a game is the dictionary definition of a Waste Of Time.

Considering college basketball is what it is, I refuse to try to project how the Huskies move forward. I’m guessing we’ll bite the bullet and get Hopkins out of here. The tide has turned among Husky fans to the point that there’s really no salvaging things. Not that I believe it’ll matter. We have 1 NCAA Tournament appearance in the last 12 seasons (and counting). This is not a prime destination for coaches or player prospects.

I’m just glad it’s all almost over. Soon enough, we’ll turn our focus to the Mariners, and everything will be right with the world (is a sentence I never thought I’d write in my adult life).

Husky Basketball Is Bumming Me Out Again

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I was legitimately surprised I haven’t written about the Husky basketball team so far this season. I would’ve figured at some point I would’ve snuck a blog post in there about the early part of the season, but for whatever reason, life got in the way.

I haven’t totally ignored the Huskies – like I can do when they’re as mediocre as they are – but I also haven’t had a chance to follow along as religiously as I did last year. Moving into a new house and not paying for cable TV will do that to you. But, even if I did have all the sports channels necessary, I don’t know if I’d go out of my way very often. Last year’s Husky basketball team wasn’t great, but it was fun! Terrell Brown was Must See TV; he was easily my favorite Husky in YEARS. The fact that he was only a one and done (for us, as a late-career transfer) was a travesty, to be sure, but you can’t play college basketball forever.

We don’t have a Terrell Brown this year. I guess the closest we’ve got is Keion Brooks (another late-career transfer), but he doesn’t play the same. He doesn’t have that adeptness at the dribble-drive. He struggles to create his own shot in the paint. This Husky team more closely resembles earlier Mike Hopkins teams (from 2017-2020), minus some very key ingredients from those two seasons where we were contending for NCAA berths.

I kinda feel beaten down, as a fan. It’s pretty clear the majority of hardcore Husky fans jumped off the Mike Hopkins bandwagon with that 2020/2021 season. For good reason; we were God-awful at 5-21 that year! I don’t know if it’s smart to EVER give a head coach another season after a performance like that. But, a lot of those same Husky haters were down on him from the season prior, which was just one year removed from our most recent NCAA berth (the only one of the Hopkins era), which I didn’t understand at all. Hopkins won back-to-back Pac-12 coach of the year awards in 2018 and 2019. He follows that up with a 15-17 campaign – following lots of graduations of key players – and you’re right at his throat? It made no sense.

Sure, NOW you can look back and say, “See, I was right! We should’ve dumped his ass then and there!” But, then don’t you just get stuck in this cycle of churning through coaches every two years? Is that smart? Odds are good that you could call for the head of any coach at any point and most of the time you could look back and say you were right. I guess, if it’s not working, it’s not working. But, it seems like if you’re high on a guy enough to hire him away from a nationally-prominent program like Syracuse, and you’re high enough on a guy to give him a raise after back-to-back coach of the year awards, you should have enough trust in him to see if he can actually build a program.

I like to think I’m more restrained in my Husky fandom. I’m a realist. I see this thing for what it is. The Huskies are – at best – a mid-tier program. They shouldn’t be terrible forever; they should contend for (and reach) the NCAA Tournament every few years or so. But, they also aren’t among the elites, and shouldn’t be trying to recruit like one.

We can also do that thing that I hate, which is look back at the players Hopkins had for his 2018 and 2019 runs – seeing all the Lorenzo Romar recruits – and confirm that he wasn’t seeing his biggest success with his own guys, but rather the previous regime’s talent. Which automatically makes you wonder: should we have just stuck with Romar?

I say no, as much as I loved Romar and called for him to stay around probably a year or two longer than he should’ve. It was time to move on. I think Hopkins did more with Romar’s final classes than Romar ever would’ve done. But, that leads me to my next point.

If you’re going to be a mid-tier college basketball program, you need a hook. You need a gimmick. You need a scheme or something that helps you stand out. That tips the scales a little bit. In college football, you’d point to the Air Raid as a prime example. You can do more with lesser talent in the Air Raid system, which will help you compete with the bigger schools. Doesn’t mean you’ll always win. But, Wazzu under Mike Leach was always much more competitive than they would’ve been under any other coach, running a more conventional offense.

I hoped that a zone-heavy defense might be that gimmick for the Huskies. Not a lot of schools run a zone like we do. And, for a couple years, it looked pretty formidable! We were holding down high-scoring teams and winning lots of games. But, as it turns out, you need really special players to succeed in that system. You need a Matisse Thybulle. Failing that, you’ve seen what’s happened the last couple years; the Huskies have largely gone away from the zone defense. What’s our hook now? Mediocrity across the board.

It also doesn’t help that the transfer portal – and the nature of the game in general – makes it nearly impossible to keep that type of defensive scheme alive. It works best when you can practice it over and over, and when you’ve got quality players willing to stick around for mutiple seasons. But, if you’re only going to be here for one year anyway, and your best shot at getting noticed – so you can play professionally one day – is by being great on offense, what’s your incentive to actually try on defense?

And that’s the rub, because the Huskies have been consistently underperforming on offense throughout Hop’s run here. He has the right idea; the game of basketball in today’s day and age is all about spreading the offense and shooting three pointers. But, all of his shooters have been FUCKING MISERABLE. It’s just unbelievable how bad they’ve been. If you’re a basketball player and you’re good enough to be recruited by multiple Power 5 schools, why is it that you come to Washington and become the world’s most brick-heavy shooters? It shouldn’t be this difficult! Make a fucking basket, you’ve been shooting for well over a decade at this point in your lives!

Without a Terrell Brown type, it feels more like a fluke when the Huskies are actually competitive. A fluke in that they have a rare good shooting night (like they did for much of last night’s game at #5 Arizona, before ultimately losing 70-67), or a fluke in that the other team has an uncharacteristically poor shooting night. As such, we’re 9-7, but a downright atrocious 1-4 in conference play.

What do you do at this point? I don’t know if there’s anything you can do. We have zero quality wins and plenty of embarrassing defeats. Kiss goodbye any notion of an At Large bid or a conference title. You can wish for a Pac-12 Tournament title in one hand and shit in the other, and I’ll tell you which will fill up first. And it’s pointless to speculate on next year, because we have no clue what this roster will look like. Between the COVID year, it seems like the mediocre players (Jamal Bey) are sticking around for-fucking-ever, while guys with any semblance of talent blow this fucking popsicle stand as soon as humanly possible (along with the guys with absolutely no talent, making you wonder why they were invited to be Huskies in the first place). Every year, it’s a mostly all-new roster, with a smattering of crappy holdovers we couldn’t shake if our lives depended on it (Cole Bajema).

What’s even more infuriating is the fact that Hop isn’t even free to “look to the future” with actual high school recruits we’re able to convince to come here, because he’s constantly on the hot seat thanks to transfers who aren’t talented enough to get the job done. Combined with a scheme that isn’t able to take advantage of whatever offensive skills they’ve got.

So, yeah, it’s probably time to say goodbye to Mike Hopkins. He’s under contract through 2024/2025, which is two more seasons. That’s a total of $6.3 million though, so you can see why we might balk at such a bitter resolution. Paying him over $3 million per year to NOT coach for us, combined with whatever we’d have to pay his replacement, all for a program that’s not likely to contend for a conference title anyway.

I’m without hope on this whole deal. Ever since that 5-win nadir season, all I’ve been looking for out of the Huskies is to be entertaining. And last year, they very much were. This year? Not so much.

It’s not likely that this program ever makes the turn to greatness. For that to happen, I still believe you have to “build it the right way” and not rely on cast-aways from other schools in the transfer portal. The transfer portal should be a means to supplement an already-solid roster with an influx at a very specific area of need; it shouldn’t be your entire fucking plan for trying to fill out a majority of your roster. You shouldn’t have to go into every single year with an all-new squad, trying to teach them the rudimentary elements of your scheme. It’d be nice to start over fresh. New coach, new scheme, and all new crop of players. No hold-overs who over-achieve and give you a false sense of success.

But, even that doesn’t seem like it’s bound to happen anytime soon.