The Washington Huskies have put the whole West Coast on notice with their 7-0 conference start in conference play. With the Pac-12 having plenty of parity (6 teams have 4 or 5 conference wins), just how have the Huskies started to pull away from the rest of the conference and risen to #24 in the RPI rankings?
Becoming Road Warriors
Washington is actually the only Pac-12 school with a winning record in true road games (4-2). While losses to Auburn (blowout) and Gonzaga (buzzer beater) were tough to swallow, losses to those top 10 teams prepared Washington for a fairly soft Pac-12. Even when Washington was down by 5 to Oregon in a game they surely would have blown a year ago, you could sense the team persuading itself, “We are not letting this game get away.” You know the rest, Jaylen Nowell would go on to score the next 8 points in a row and Washington would remain undefeated. It’s interesting because at the beginning of the year most Husky fans would have taken a record of 4-5 on the road in conference play, yet here the Huskies are at 4-0 with 5 road games to play.
Shutdown Defense
The Washington 2-3 zone has become dominant. While 2-3 zones are supposedly susceptible to 3-point shooting, after some struggles in non-conference play that saw opponents shoot just under 35% from downtown, the Huskies have put the clamps down. Even with Oregon State’s Stephen Thompson Jr. going 6 for 11 on Saturday, in Pac-12 play opponents are shooting a conference low 29.2% from 3.
- Washington is 32nd in the NCAA in scoring defense at 64.8 points per game (Oregon is 31st with 64.7) out of 351 teams.
- Huskies are 2nd in the nation in blocked shots (6.3) behind only Duke.
- 24th in steals per game (8.3)
- Washington is one of only 30 NCAA teams holding opponents to less than 40% from the field (39.9%)
We knew Matisse Thybulle was a defensive ace, but Sam Timmins and Hameir Wright have both provided rim protection averaging over a block per game. The Huskies are not only forcing turnovers but turning them into fast break points.
Offensive Efficiency
No one will confuse this team with the 2012 Kentucky Wildcats in terms of offensive potency but they are an efficient offense. Jaylen Nowell and Naz Carter are 1 on 1 players but in conference play when the Huskies need to get into a half-court offense they can produce out of their sets, something missing during the Lorenzo Romar era. Specifically let’s start with David Crisp, the senior is averaging 11.7 points per game which is only .1 better than last year but he’s doing it on 1.2 field goal attempts less per game. His 3pt percentage has jumped from 28.6% to 38.8% and he is turning the ball over .4 times fewer this year than a year ago. Nowell is also shooting fewer times per game but he’s increased his shooting percentage from 45.1% to 51.8% and his 3-point from 35.1% to 43.9%. Even Timmins looks like a different player, after playing 15 minutes a game as a freshman and 18 as a sophomore, Timmons is playing less (11 a game) but has been much more effective in short spurts. He’s turning the ball over less, and shooting a career-high 61%.
The Huskies are turning the ball over less than their opponents by a clip of 2.8 per game in conference play. With the shooting, I do think it’s highly probable the team will regress to the mean at some point. Take Crisp who is shooting 52% from 3 in conference games after shooting just 29% during non-conference play and even less a year ago. But with Nowell, Carter and Noah Dickerson they have so many scorers that when someone has a bad game there are plenty of others to pick up the slack.
Speaking of Titles, Could this be a Double Pac-12 championship?
It has been 20 years since a Pac-12 school has won a conference title in both men’s basketball and football in the same academic year. In 1999, a Stanford football team coached by none other than Tyrone Willingham went 7-1 to win the Pac-10. That spring the 1999/2000 Cardinal basketball team tied Arizona for the Pac-12 title on the court. Washington has a chance to be the first conference school to win an outright title in both sports in 35 years when UCLA won both titles during the 1983-1984 season.
Every Pac-12 team has at least one loss and Utah and USC are the only teams with two. Washington has a great chance to put further distance between themselves when they play USC on Wednesday. Utah has won 4 in a row since losing at home to Washington including a sweep of the Bay Area schools. The Utes host Oregon and Oregon State this week.
Fourteen wins may be the magic number to win the Pac-12 this year but the Huskies won’t want to leave anything to chance. In 2011-2012 the Huskies went 14-4 in the Pac-12 but were left out of the NCAA tournament due to non-conference struggles and a loss in the opening round of the Pac-12 tournament. Washington was 17-6 overall and 7-3 in the Pac-12 after beating Arizona last year, one thought that might challenge for the Pac-12 title. They would go just 3-6 the rest of the way including a first round exit in the Pac-12 tournament. Even after they beat Oregon State Saturday, the team was pretty subdued. They don’t seem satisfied and why should they be until they bring a Pac-12 title home?
