Jaylen Nowell scored 24 points to help top seeded Washington defeat USC 78 to 75 and advance to the Pac-12 tournament semi-finals tomorrow.
Washington led the whole way but struggled to pull away from the Trojans. When Jonah Matthews hit a 3-pointer to cut Washington’s lead to one with 1:09 to go, the Huskies looked like they were in trouble.
Dominic Green to the rescue. The senior who had been in a slump took a feed from Crisp in the corner, faked a shot and took a slide step to his left before nailing a 3-pointer with the shot clock at four that put the Huskies up 75-71. With USC still stunned from Green’s shot, Mattise Thybulle stole a lazy pass at the top of the key and took it the other way for a windmill dunk that pushed the Huskies lead to six with 32 seconds to go sending the Husky faithful into a frenzy.
The Huskies made enough free throws down the stretch to avoid losing their opening game for the 5th time in the last 6 seasons.
The Huskies opened the game on an 8-1 run with two threes from a surprise player in Hameir Wright. The Huskies led 43-38 at half-time.
Keys to the Game
Washington’s ball movement was excellent
The Huskies had just 4 assist in their home loss to Oregon on Saturday but improved to the tune of 19 in Thursday’s win including 6 by David Crisp. Crisp didn’t even garner Honorable Mention All Pac-12 and a lot of that probably had to do with his poor assist numbers as a point guard. He played an excellent game and only had 2 of the Huskies 13 turnovers. Crisp most impressive pass came when the Huskies were in midst of a scoring draught after USC had switched from zone to man. Crisp did a ball fake to Thybulle on the wing then made a perfect bounce bass on a backdoor cut that was finished with a two-hand dunk to put the Huskies up four.
Washington’s bench was on-fire
The last time Green made three 3-pointers in a game was January 19th against Cal in Seattle. Green went 0 for 4 from three in the loss to Oregon but was 3 of 6 against the Trojans finishing with 9 points. Naz Carter was also a major factor scoring 13 points in 19 minutes. The sophomore had an alley-oop in the first-half and an impressive and-one in the 2nd half to complete a 3-point play. To counter USC’s zone Mike Hopkins at times deployed a lineup with Wright at the 5 and Green at the 4 to give the Huskies five players capable of shooting from behind the 3-point line.
The Huskies found their 3-point stroke
Speaking of the 3-point line the Huskies took 28 3’s making 13 of them for a 46.4% success rate. Nowell was especially lethal going 4 of 4 from beyond the arc. The Huskies were just 3 of 20 (15%) from behind the 3-point line against the Ducks but the Trojans zone allowed for several open looks and the Huskies didn’t miss them this time.
Outlook: Washington will play the Colorado/Oregon State winner on Friday. So far the higher seed has won every game in the Pac-12 tournament but at press time the Buffaloes led the Beavers. On to the player grades…
Wright – 8 – Wright hadn’t scored the past two games over 34 minutes but finished with 8 points, the most he’s scored since December. While the offense wasn’t expected he played excellent defense as usual adding two blocks and two steals.
Dickerson – 5 – Dickerson struggled with the Trojans length inside going just 1 of 7 from the field and he had a season-low 2 points with 3 turnovers. Dickerson deserves a lot of credit for battling on the boards where he grabbed 11 rebounds.
Nowell – 9 – Nowell was a little more selfish than usual and the Huskies benefited from that. He shot 61% from the field, dished 3 assist and grabbed 8 rebounds. The only real red mark would be his four turnovers.
Thybulle – 7 – Thybulle struggled from the field missing his first six attempts but when your shot isn’t going in, you may as well just dunk it as he did on his final two shots. He finished with 5 steals passing Jason Kidd for the single-season record (115) and he’s now tied with Gary Payton for the conference career record with 321.
Crisp – 9 – Crisp finished with 18 points and was 3 of 6 from downtown. As mentioned above, he ran the offense well and was a savvy distributor.
Timmins – NR – Timmins only played four minutes with Wright earning more minutes than normal.
Carter – 9 – USC has a lot of excellent athletes but Carter showed he’s no slouch himself. On one play he followed a missed 3-pointer by Wright perfectly timing his jump to avoid an over the back foul on Rakocevic. Mid-jump he nearly had a put-back layin where his head was level with the rim but Rakocevic ended up fouling him sending him to the line, it was a jaw-dropping athletic play.
Green – 8 – This isn’t news to you but I will reiterate, the Huskies are so much better when Green is on. When he can hit 3’s while playing the 4, he’s able to create favorable matchups forcing the opposition to take a big man out of the paint.
