It wasn’t supposed to be close. Washington was expected to run past the Saint Martin’s Saints with no problem in their Thursday night exhibition game at Alaska Airlines Arena. But that was not the case. Instead, with 6:24 remaining, the Huskies trailed 77-72.
But the Huskies talent would override Saint Martin’s hot 3-point shooting in the end. Washington would trail from the 13:38 mark, all the way to the 5:29 mark in the second half, before true freshman Jaylen Nowell tied the game, 77-77, after hitting a 3-pointer. Saint Martin’s would answer and so would the Huskies. But in the final minutes of the game, the Huskies did just enough to escape with the win.
The play of the game came after a timeout when Washington had the ball with 38 seconds remaining. UW led 89-87 and decided to let the clock run with the ball in Jaylen Nowell’s hands. Nowell used a nifty crossover move with about five seconds on the shot clock that made his defender fall and he finished it off with about a 10-foot floater to seal the victory.
“I called him and told him, flat screen for Jaylen (Nowell),” Coach Hopkins said about the play. “Go until there’s 8 on the clock. He went when there was about six. So I was starting to get a little panicky, like ‘go’, ‘go’. But you know he’s a player. He’s a guy that likes the big moment and he made the big play.”
Doing almost all the damage for Saint Martin’s were guards Luke Chavez and EJ Boyce. Chavez, a transfer from South Puget Sound Community College, scored a game-high 32 points, including six 3-pointers. EJ Boyce, a transfer out of San Jose State, was the game’s second leading scorer, adding 22 points, including seven 3-pointers.
The Huskies were led by junior forward, Noah Dickerson, who scored 21 points and had 10 rebounds. David Crisp scored 14. Matisse Thybulle and Jaylen Nowell each scored 14 points.
What was most concerning in the close win, was UW’s inability to defend the 3-point shot. Saint Martin’s made 18-34 (52.9%) of their 3-point attempts. Many of them were uncontested shots.
“When you play teams, the experience that I had defensively, is you have to.. if it’s the 3-point shot, you have to take it away, right away,” Coach Hopkins said after the game.”It’s got to be so uncomfortable that they don’t even see the basket. What we did is, they made seven threes in the first six minutes of the game. They get really confident, they feel comfortable. The idea of defense is getting them to feel uncomfortable. And you know we had some breakdowns, they’re learning the zones, new system, but we’ll get better at it.”
The Huskies open their regular season up against Belmont at home next Friday night at 7 p.m. Washington will have seven days to fix the defensive errors that happened Thursday night.
“Doesn’t matter, get better,” Coach Hopkins said before leaving the post-game podium.
