Friday, March 24, 2006

REVIEW OF THE HUSKIES CRUSHING LOSS

I just finished re-watching the game. Sports fans in the State of Washington are the Job of Sports Fans. This is absurd, when does are day come. Here is the breakdown.

  • You have to foul. We have talked about this one thousand times on Locked on Sports. It is a mathmatical no brainer. If you lead by three with less then 7 seconds you have to foul. It is criminal not to and it cost Washington the game. This is a classic example of coaches coaching scared. Coaches don't foul because they are scared of the worst case scenario no matter how rare it might be. Coaches need to be smarter. In this case Lorenzo cost Washington a trip to the Elite 8 because he coached out of fear from a past experience.

  • The amount of mistakes down the stretch by Washington were unreal. Again we have talked all year on the coaches show about how do you maintain aggressiveness and be smart. The Huskies failed this balance and it cost them the game. Here is the sequence.

  • Up 6 with 1:28 left the Huskies have the ball on a rebound but in traffic Mike Jensen can't get the ball out and throws a bad pass to Dentmon out of bounds. The next play leads to Bobby Jones fouling out.
    Up 5 with :35 seconds left after a Jensen miss UConn pushes it up and Jensen sags into the lane leaving UConn's best three point shooter open for a bomb.
    Up 4 with :11 seconds left Jensen fouls Williams on a drive and gives up and three point play to make it a one point game. The extra point becomes the difference on the final possession. Jensen fouls out.
    Up 3 the Huskies decided not to foul and we head to overtime.

    In overtime, the Officials miss a goaltending, but down 2 the Huskies panicked when they got gift and threw the ball away.

  • The Huskies coaches did a great job with their defensive game plan. They doubled the pick n roll and forced the ball out of the hands of UConn's primary ball handlers. It was fantastic. It forced 26 turnovers and for all intent and purpose it won the game.

  • Jamal Williams was fantastic. His one on one game was unstoppable. He kept the Dawgs in the game when Roy was on the bench.


  • The real killer is that Washington played great and matched UConn every step of the way. It proves Washington was good enough go to the Final Four and they may have been good enough to win it.


  • UConn really struggled on the offensive end. I said on 950,KJR today that if the Dawgs controlled the defensive glass they could stop UConn and for the most part they did that.


  • On NBA Draft day when someone drafts Rudy Gay over Brandon Roy because of potential it will be a crime. Roy showed what a night in and night out stud he is again in this game. Gay showed how he rarely turns on the switch.


  • Ryan Appelby made a great steal and there was a defender in his way that forced him to curl out. It is a minor deal, but that is a great play by the UConn player. He threw the pass away and instead of sulking he quickly stepped out on the floor and cut off Appleby's path. It kept the play alive and forced the turnover. Little Things.


  • One of the key times of the game was early in the second half when Washington had a real chance to blow it out and they got greedy shooting long threes and missed all of them. With 17:00 left Washington forced four straight turnovers up 8 and weren't able to convert any of the four. Roy missed a drive,Jones missed a three, Williams missed a fade away and Dentom missed a deep quick three. All bad shots. Two of those and Washington would have been up 12 or more and rolling. Then two possessions later up 10 Roy missed a lay-up off a turnover that would have put them up 12. Then another turnvoer and the Huskies threw it away on an in-bound pass which lead to a Roy foul that would be costly. This was the key to the whole game.

  • The double techinical that knocked Roy out of the game for 6 minutes was on the upcoming sequence. The officials didn't have to call it, but it was a mistake by Roy to be in that situation.

  • Finally, this is another great season for Romar and Washington. To make the Sweet Sixteen in back to back years is really special. The pain comes because last year if Washington had played Louisville 10 times they would have lost 9 of them, if this year's team played UConn 10 times I think they would win 6 of them.
  • 11 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    Goaltending.

    Anonymous said...

    47-23, 34-18, 19-31...NO RESPECT!

    Anonymous said...

    Gonna be nice when the rest of the USA finds out Gonzaga is from Washington...

    or the refs, at least...

    then we'll have to start filing missing persons reports during tourney time for Gonzaga

    Anonymous said...

    This may be a bit harsh, but I'm so happy that I'll never have to watch Mike Jensen in a Husky uniform again. As Locke makes painfully clear, he almost single-handedly blew the last two minutes of the game. That foul on Williams was utterly inexcusable. If you don't give up a three points on that possession, you can't lose if you hit free throws.

    Anonymous said...

    Thank-you KJR for doing whatever was needed technically so that the radio broadcast was pretty close to the TV broadcast...much more fun to listen that way. The ending was sad, but What a Game! Our Huskies at least looked like it was fun some of time, while UCONN's kids looked either mad or indifferent (at least early-on). I vote for B. Roy going to the Sonics.

    Anonymous said...

    Who said anything about Jensen ruining his legacy? Mike has certainly done some good things here, and is to be commended for going toe to toe with players who have outsized him. But let's call a spade a spade -- he has always been a shaky decision maker and has always been unsound with the ball in his hands. Those traits reared their head with a vengeance in the final two minutes last night and cost UW the game.

    Anonymous said...

    Huskies another great year...with more to come (even better years) it was heart breaking to watch that game end the way it did. Free throw descrepency was insane i know the Illinois game was similar in our favor but theres a huge difference between aggressive play and horrible officiating. I just dont understand how this could happen to seattle teams over and over again. This is too much to take in a 3month span first the Super Bowl now this well i just cant wait till next year!

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    godtomsatan said...

    A bummer.

    Good news is that one of these tourneys, Romar will get past this point.

    Too bad Brandon Roy couldn't have had the opportunity.

    Anonymous said...

    There has to be a reason why almost every coach in the NCAA's would rather play good defense and hope to stop a guy from hitting a 3-pt to tie/win the game; instead of the "up by 3, let's foul them and let them shoot FTs."

    I don't think it's coaching scared, it's coaching with experience.

    Romar has said that he's 6-1 when down by 3 and not fouling; now he's 6-2. Those percentages mean he's a .750% winner in those situations.

    Anonymous said...

    That shit was 100% Mike Jensen's fault, he got called out in the national press and promptly assumed the fetal position. He's a bitch, a fake ass Dolph Lundgren wanna be, what a fuckin piece of shit. 3pts!!!!! in what could possibly be your last collegiate game ever???? What a fuckin Fag. I hope that the Huskies had a fuckin blanket party with his ass in the locker room. For those of you who don't know what a blanket party is, it's when you throw a blanket over someone and stomp a mud hole in that ass.