‘Final story hasn’t yet been written’ on this Huskies team
Feb 17, 2018, 10:07 AM | Updated: 11:53 am
Can the Huskies snap their losing streak to power through the final stretch of the season? (AP)
(AP)
Washington men’s hoops have dropped their last three games after posting one of the year’s most impressive turnarounds. There’s plenty of season left to be played, but is their recent performance reason to be worried?
‘Utes will be a problem for the Huskies’ if they meet again
Seattle Times Huskies reporter Percy Allen joined Bob Stelton and Dave Grosby on 710 ESPN Seattle to talk about what he thinks went wrong last week, where he thinks the Huskies are as a program, and what the rest of the season holds for this team.
“It’s not one thing, but it’s a few things. Basically, it’s their defense,” Allen said of Washington’s recent losses. “This is a team that is sometimes challenged on offense and they know that going in. But what they can do, and what they have done, is they can play phenomenal defense, particularly perimeter defense. And these three games here, basically in two of them, in the second halves they just didn’t do that …
“The flip side of that is the offense. I think we can take a look at that Oregon State game and say that’s a ltitle bit of the outlier… so that’s kind of where they’re at right now. They’re offensively challenged, and so when their defense doesn’t show up, that’s when they get in trouble.”
Was what we saw against the Arizona schools the outlier, or are these losses out of character?
“That’s really tough to say,” Allen said. “Look, they had been so good in games decided by five points or less, so good in games decided by 10 points or less, that they have just been riding that edge there. And the law of basketball says, ‘Well that’s going to catch up to you at some point in time,’ that the longer you try to ride out those close games, well, you’re going to lose a couple of those.
“It’s hard for me to un-witness what I saw. I saw them beat Arizona State, I saw them beat Arizona, and those were two incredible wins. And it wasn’t like they were playing out of their skulls… they just played sound basketball and they beat those squads. I think they’re somewhere in the middle. I really do. There’s a lot of season left here, I don’t think the final story has been written on this team yet. And what they do here is really going to determine their postseason fate.”
