College Basketball: Washington Huskies Return To National Spotlight
By Nathan Giese
The year is 2011 in college basketball. Kemba Walker leads the Connecticut Huskies to an unbelievable run to a national championship. Kyrie Irving plays a total of eight games for the Duke Blue Devils, but earns the No.1 pick in the NBA Draft. The Washington Huskies make their final NCAA Tournament appearance and point guard Isaiah Thomas earns the final pick in the draft to the Sacramento Kings.
While 2011 may not seem like that long ago, it’s forever ago in basketball times. So much has changed, especially at the college level. Freshmen are the spotlight players. High-major programs are all trying to keep up with schools like Kentucky and Kansas, who consistently lose players to the NBA only to reload with McDonald’s All-Americans. Those who can’t keep up get lost in the shuffle, struggling to find a balance between recruiting and returning players.
One of those programs that has had a hard time keeping up has been Washington. Once a mainstay at the top of the college basketball world, the Huskies have been on the outside looking in when it comes time for the annual NCAA Tournament, something few thought we’d ever see.
Washington did send two players to the NBA after their latest tournament run in 2011 (Thomas and Justin Holiday, who went undrafted but has earned roster spots in both the NBA and D-League during his pro run) and has sent three players to the NBA since (Terrence Ross and Tony Wroten in 2012; C.J. Wilcox in 2014).
But the team success has not followed along.
NIT appearances in 2012 and 2013 were nice fillers, but not where the Huskies wanted to be. Things were looking bleak before, but then Washington missed out on postseason play all together in 2014, going 17-15 overall and 9-9 in Pac-12 play. Some began to wonder if it was time to look for a new coach, despite Lorenzo Romar’s successes in the past.
Picked to finish in the Pac-12 between sixth and eighth by many media outlets, it looked like another rough year for the Huskies. Could they turn it around?
Fast forward about a month in regular season play and not only has Washington turned it around, they are back in the national spotlight, currently ranked 16th in the AP Poll and USA TODAY Coaches Poll, their highest ranking since 2010. A 9-0 start is what has gotten them back into the conversation, and it’s what’s gotten the Huskies to return to the prominence we’re accustomed to seeing from them.
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With wins over a good UTEP team on a neutral court and a beatdown of then 13th-ranked San Diego State at home, Washington is off to their best start since the 2005-06 season when they began the year 11-0. They ended that year with a 26-7 overall record and wound up in a Sweet 16 showdown with the UConn Huskies, a highly contested game they lost in overtime.
No, things haven’t been peachy for Washington in quite some time, but with the start they are having, it would appear things have turned around for them.
Led by sophomore Nigel Williams-Goss, a fringe first round 2015 NBA Draft pick, the Huskies have gotten back on track. Williams-Goss currently leads the team in scoring at 14.6 points per game and assists with 6.9 per game. He’s also third in rebounds with 5.4 per game and he does all of this while rarely coming off the floor, playing an average of 34 minutes per game. Not the best outside shooting threat (25.8 percent from three), the 6’3″ guard impacts the game in multiple ways, being the on-court leader Washington has been looking for.
He’s not doing it alone, though. His backcourt mate Andrew Andrews is matching him with 13.6 points, 4.3 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game while shooting 39 percent from three and 87 percent from the free throw line. Combined, Andrews and Williams-Goss make up one of the most underrated backcourts in the country, though it may not take much longer for the rest of the nation to take notice.
With those two controlling the tempo on offense and defense, Robert Upshaw is allowed to do what a 7’0″ center should do at this level: protect the paint and clean up on the boards. Upshaw currently leads the nation in blocked shots, swatting away 38 opponent shot attempts, good for over 4 per game.
A big man who knows how to operate, Upshaw’s been a force on offense as well, averaging over 10 points and seven rebounds per contest, converting on 65 percent of his shot opportunities, good for 27th in the nation.
Upshaw, Williams-Goss and Andrews combine for 52 percent of Washington’s scoring, 40 percent of the team’s total rebounds and over 61 percent of the team’s total assists. It’s a three-man show, sure, but it’s one that has many dynamics to it.
Scoring, rebounding and finding teammates for open looks are three of the biggest factors for team success, and add in the over eight blocks per game as a team, second in the country behind Kentucky, and you can see how well Washington is playing right now.
Things don’t get much easier for the Huskies, though. It all begins on Saturday, when the Huskies venture to Las Vegas for the MGM Grand Showcase for a Top 25 showdown with 15th-ranked Oklahoma. The Sooners are off to a 7-2 start, with neither loss looking bad on their part (a true road loss at Creighton and to Wisconsin in the Battle 4 Atlantis championship game).
Oklahoma has four players (Buddy Hield, Isaiah Cousin, TaShawn Thomas and Ryan Spangler) averaging 10 points or more, with Hield leading the way at 16.0 per game. Hield is the same guy that said the Sooners will win the Big-12 and end Kansas’ 10-year run as regular season championships. Words need results to back them up, and the Sooners seem intent to make that prediction come true early in the season.
With how rare it is to get a non-conference game with both teams ranked in the top 25 at this point in the season, it’s a big game, a statement game, for both the Huskies and the Sooners. Washington wants to prove that they should continue to be taken seriously, while Oklahoma wants to show they are as good as advertised. A win for both teams is critical, but only one team can come out on top.
Conference play doesn’t get much easier, and there’s a blessing and a curse in playing Arizona just once on your home floor. When the selection committee convenes to decide the fate of several programs for the NCAA Tournament, having just one game against a team ranked in the top of the country within your own conference could come back to haunt you. Though that’s not necessarily fair, that’s the way it works sometimes. A win in that game could be critical.
However, that game is off in the distant future of February. All Washington can do now is keep playing their game and keep winning. They’ve done a good job of that so far, and are back in the national spotlight because of it.
Question is: how long will they remain there?