15 observations from the UW v. Cal game.
Fig Jam
1. If you are a PAC 10 team, you just have to live with terrible officiating. I’ve watched a ton of PAC 10 ball this season and the officials in this league are embarassing. All three of UW’s games have been bad. Not pro-UW, not anti-UW, just bad. Yesterday’s game was nonsensical. Sometimes they were calling it tight, sometimes they were letting it get physical. A bad call was immediately fixed by a make up call to the point you could predict it. Again – I’m not bitching because I think UW got the short end of the stick from the refs, I’m bitching because I think basketball fans got the short end of the stick in an otherwise epic game. Both teams got equally jobbed.
2. Lorenzo Romar made too many mistakes. In overtime he subbed Brockman out on Defense due to having 4 fouls and the end result was several offensive rebounds for Cal that they converted into points. When you need stops and you force missed shots, you need the conferences’ best rebounder out there to clean things up. Second chance points doomed the Dawgs.
3. For all the points and rebounds that Jon Brockman has amassed at Washington, his legacy is in danger of being defined by the little things he hasn’t done. He shot 29% from the free throw line this weekend against Cal and Stanford. 2 for 8 against the Bears. That isn’t going to cut it.
4. Justin Dentmon is having a great senior season. His freshman year he benefitted greatly having Brandon Roy next to him and his numbers were fantastic. This year, with Freshman phenom Isaiah Thomas beside him, Dentmon is doing it again.
5. Justin Holiday is going to get more and more minutes as the season progresses. He is confident with the ball, and despite a few mistakes, remains UW’s best on ball defender.
6. Back to questionable coaching decisions – Darnell Gant did not see the floor late in the game, which is baffling. With Cal’s rebounding late, it would have been nice to see Gant (who is a good free throw shooter coincidently) out on the floor.
7. Isaiah Thomas is learning how to become a floor leader. However, he is only a freshman. His foul later in the second overtime that allowed Cal to tie the game was devastating. It looked like a bad call, but who knows. He can’t put himself in that position. Box out.
8. Mike Montgomery is a master of working the refs.
9. Cal’s duo of Randle and Christopher are as good as any two player combination in the PAC 10.
10. Cal’s best player, Patrick Christopher, picked up his 4th foul with 3:51 left in regulation. He played the rest of the game and all three overtimes without picking up his 5th. That is inexcusable from a UW perspective. UW should have gone after him time and time again until he had his fifth and they didn’t. Complete breakdown.
11. For the first time in a few seasons, Hec Ed was Hec Ed again. The crowd was amped up. One complaint, however, is the lack of creativity coming out of the dawgpack. Do something other than sway around and recycle the same 4 chants.
12. This game will likely be the pivotal game for the Huskies this season. They had it and they let it get away. It will either define them or destroy them.
13. The “Lips” kareokee halftime performance is the single worst promotion/gimmick that has ever come out of Husky halftimes. Whoever is in charge of those should immediately take that away. It sucks.
14. Matthew Bryan Amaning has regressed. He has not dominated better defenders the way he did the weaker nonconference opponents.
15. Jon Brockman, along with the rest of the team, should watch film of this game 15 feet away from the TV screen. They should eat 15 feet apart this week, practice in 15 minute incriments, and play pick-up games to 15. 15 feet is exactly how far away a free throw is… The Huskies should get familiar with it because they are way to confused from that distance right now. It is time that Romar address this problem publicly because it is the elephant in the gym right now.
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MBA would benefit by having a shooter to either give him the space he needs to create shots, or make the defense pay for doubling him. Remember when we had Ken Bone and we used to run sets? He would score 10 ppg the way Bobby Jones used to by just getting the ball 10 feet from the basket without 3 guys around him.
That would work only so long as he was willing to pass the ball back out to the perimeter for the shooters to hit the open shots when the defense collapses on him. The problem right now isn’t that we can’t get him looks, it’s that he forces it sometimes.
Notably absent from your observations was Quincy Pondexter, just as he was from the Husky offense on Saturday. Beyond that, the Huskies win this game if they could shoot free throws. I may be wrong, but 3 of our 4 losses (Portland, Florida and Cal) would hvae been wins if we simply shot free throws at the national average. Not too much to ask for a team aspiring to finish in the top half of the PAC-10. The two reasons our FT average is up slightly this year is that Wallace isn’t getting any PT and Thomas can shoot FT’s. In any event, we should be a lock to host an opening-round CBI game again this year, with an outside shot at the NIT.
I don’t have a problem with Quincy’s performance because he was at least agressive. He missed a bunch of shots, but at least he wasn’t playing scared. He also played good D, got some good boards, and created a few turnovers. This one’s on Brockman and Romar in my opinion. Plus – in the Stanford game QPon went 6/6 from the line down the stretch so he’s clearly not the problem. Had he gone to the line more in the Cal game, we’d probably have won.
FT’s are obviously the biggest problem the team has. That’s why the all the 15 references. FT = 15 feet.
How far is a free throw?
http://www.ehow.com/how_3046_shoot-free-throw.html
http://www.freethrow.com/
Looks like Coach Romar should call Dr. Tom. Maybe he can also teach Locker how to pass a football, or do you need a different kind of Dr. for that? I can take these cheap shots, I paid my dues, I was in the band.
I’m pretty sure Isaiah was in la la land after that hard foul towards the end of regulation. I don’t know if he should have been on the floor. He didn’t do anything after that.
Regarding that play: I don’t care how quickly the offending player apologizes, when you take a player down by his head – however inadvertent – that is a flagrant foul.
Between that and the phantom foul by Justin Holiday on the 3 pointer, the refs played a significant role in the game. At some point Pac-10 refs have to start respecting Romar and our home floor. Soon. Hopefully he sent in a tape to the league office.
I’m not overly mad at this because even with these calls we should have won. I blame our team first. But the whistles were ridiculous.
I have to disagree with point 10. The Huskies actaully did go after Christopher time and time again. It is a credit to Montgomery and Christopher himself that he did not foul out.
Montgomery had Christopher guard Quincy Pondexter down the stretch and in the overtimes. The dawgs went to Q-Pon for an isolation 3 or 4 times. Quincy scored twice, looked confused once, or else kicked it out to JD or Isiah. When the off ball defense denied a play to Quincy on the post, Romar wisely went to his guards to drive the lane.
And having the ball in JD’s hands was actually a valiant attempt to get Christopher (and various other bears in foul trouble) to foul out as well. Remember that JD shot about 100 free throws. Hats off to Christopher who, with a little help from the zebras, simply didn’t commit his last foul.