Belmont (0-0) at Washington (0-0)
7 p.m., tonight
Alaska Airlines Arena (Seattle, Washington)
TV: Pac-12 Network (Washington) Radio: 570 KVI
The Mike Hopkins era begins tonight for the University of Washington men’s basketball team – as they face Belmont at 7 p.m. It could be an early test for the new look Husky team.
“They can really shoot the basketball,” Hopkins said about the Belmont Bruins.”They shot it 35 (percent) last year, a game. They got (one) of the great coaches of all-time, in coach (Rick) Byrd. It’s funny, someone was asking me about Belmont and I said, I’ve been around (Mike) Krzyzewski, I’ve been around coach (Jim) Boeheim in a lot of those meetings and they always talk about that great coaches that don’t get a lot hype and he’s one of the great one’s who’s built an incredible program. They’re very well coached. They know how to space the floor. Their strength is their offense. They move the ball, they got shooters one-through-five. And I feel like if we can do a good job stopping them, holding their percentages down, making them unconformable – which we didn’t do in the last game – that we’ll have a chance in the game.”
In Washington’s exhibition game against Saint Martin’s, on November 2, they avoided a scare, winning the contest, 91-87. The Huskies’ energy seemed to be lacking. Saint Martin’s shot 18-34 (52%) from 3-point land. It was a game the Huskies could definitely learn from. Junior guard David Crisp emphasized coming out with more energy to start the game.
“Not much of a since of urgency,” Crisp said about what he saw after watching film of the Saint Martin’s game.”A little bit of mis-rotations, guys are out of place on defense. Defensively that was the biggest thing (we) really looked at. Just little tweaks we could of made, some contests that could have been a lot better. You know a lot of things that we can correct. So I’m not worried about that. Just working on it in the practice.”
Coach Hopkins said on Wednesday that they have made some tweaks to the zone defense and will tinker with the lineups in preparation for tonight’s game.
The Huskies return key starters, David Crisp, Matisse Thybulle, and Noah Dickerson. They add a few talented freshmen as well. Including guard Jaylen Nowell, who scored 14 points in their exhibition game against Saint Martin’s.
Washington opened as just 2-point favorites against a Belmont team that is coming off a 23-7 season. The Bruins have won 20+ games in five consecutive seasons.
After 22 seasons serving as an assistant at Syracuse, Mike Hopkins comes to Washington looking to turn the program around, after a 9-22 season. The Huskies have missed the NCAA tournament in six straight seasons.
