The Huskies picked up their ninth win of the season Tuesday night, beating Bethune-Cookman, 106-55. Washington’s nine wins this season are already as many wins as they had one season ago, when the Huskies finished 9-22. It was the Huskies’ largest victory since 2010, when UW beat McNeese State, 118-64.
“You can just really feel the team chemistry and just feel how close everybody is – how together everyone is,” Washington point guard David Crisp said after the game about what’s different with this year’s team.”Nobody’s going out the games thinking like man I got to go get mines. Nobody’s thinking like that. Everybody’s like what can I do to contribute to get this win. And once you put the egos aside and put the team first, you’d be amazed at what you can accomplish. From the off-season, everybody working, just stay the course, keep pushing, keep grinding, keep pushing each other to get better. You know it’s been working well for us.”
One of the things preached after UW’s close win against Loyola Marymount was their inability to put away teams earlier in the game when they had a chance. Coming into tonight, six of UW’s nine wins were by 10 or less points. Tonight, the trend finally changed for coach Mike Hopkins and the Washington Huskies.
Washington used a 17-6 run early in the second half to extend their lead. After that UW was on cruise control as seemingly every thing the Huskies put up found the bottom of the net. The Huskies finished the night shooting 63% from the field and 63% from 3-point range. More impressively, UW outscored BCU 63-19 in the second half.
“Halftime we challenged our team, you know don’t gamble anymore,” Coach Mike Hopkins on what was said at halftime when UW led just 43-36.”We challenged our team to really be solid defensively and quit gambling. Try to be in our positions, keep guys out of the lane and our guys did a really good job. To be a great team it needs to be led by your defense. You have to and we were just getting behind. And I thought the guys really responded and really executed and it ended up being our best offense. We were able to get in transition (and) get some easy baskets.”
Washington held the Wildcats to just 19 points in the second half while forcing 24 turnovers for the game. UW’s defense finished with 16 steals and 15 blocks that in large part led to their 29 fast break points.
Dominic Green and David Crisp each led the Huskies with 18 points. Dominic Green came off the bench to make 6-of-9 three-point attempts, while David Crisp added four 3-pointers of his own.
Matisse Thybulle had a great overall game, finishing with 10 points, seven steals, and four assists.
Jaylen Nowell scored 15 points. Noah Dickerson finished with 10 points. And freshman Nahziah Carter added 11 points.
In all, 11 huskies scored, inlcuding walk-on’s, Greg Bowman and Jason Crandall.
The Huskies improved to 9-3 on the season while Bethune-Cookman dropped to 5-8.
Washington next hosts Montana on Friday night at 8 p.m. The game airs on the Pac-12 Network.
