HUSKIES 99 ZAGS 95

I just finished watching the Huskies beat the Zags on my Tivo. This is a brief breakdown of my thoughts. I will have more details and more thoughts tomorrow on the blog as well as when I host for the Gasman starting at 4 pm.

What a terrific game. Important win for the Huskies. For the Zags to play with the Dawgs considering the plethora of injuries is a statement to how good a basketball team Mark Few has this year.

Adam Morrison reminds me of Danny Manning when he was at Kansas. He is imply unguardable. The Dawgs sent Brandon Roy, Bobby Jones and Joel Smith at him. None of them did a bad job and Morrison torched all of them. He is amazing. He is a delight to watch. He is the best basketball player in the country and he may be the best offensive player in decades.

My big picture analysis is neither of these teams are final four 4 contenders until they commit to playing some defense. Thus Huskies defense in the second half was a disaster. A complete and utter disaster. I will build the number and add them tomorrow. Last year, the Zags defense wasn’t high enough quality to win a lot in the tournament and this year is the same. There is a threshold of what level your defense has to perform or you will not be able to win consistently in the NCAA tournament. Both of these teams are on the wrong side of the threshold.

The Zags win this game if Ravolio is not hurt. Pargo made three if not four critical turnovers late in the second half that were freshman errors.

I was very impressed with Justin Dentmon. For the most part he made good decisions. He was fearless late. My favorite play was when he pumped fake the open three to move into a shorter higher percentage three. It showed a high basketball IQ. He is legit and the Huskies are in very good hands with him at the helm.

My biggest concern about the Huskies was how many mistakes would they make late in games without Nate, Will and Tre. Impressively they avoided big disastrous errors. They had a few possessions where they could have been smarter, but you can’t button down the hatches the whole way.

Brandon Roy has to be much better then that if he wants to carry this team. Bobby Jones is the best player on this team until Roy shows me otherwise.

Lorenzo Romar has an amazing feel for this team considering how young they are. He let them play through some tough times. Late in the game he left them keep the flow and then when he had to he called the timeout to get everything controlled and collected.

The Huskies interior defensive rebounding was invisible for huge portions of the game.

Final thought for now. Great game. Super outcome for both sets of fans. The Dawgs needed the win. The Zags have to still believe that they have something special and when healthy they win that game. Adam Morrison is playing a different game. It was a pleasure to see him and he will make every Zag game this year a Tivo event.