Watched the Huskies and Texas A&M from home so I could catch the entire Cal/Kansas game also.
Here are my combined thoughts on the two contests:
Cal is going to be tough. Both UW (Texas Tech, Georgetown) and Cal (New Mexico, Ohio State before Evan Turner’s injury, Syracuse, Kansas) have lost their tough contests away from home, and prevailed in all of the games they were expected to win. I’m not sure why voters rank UW higher than Cal in the polls — my sense is that this is a dead heat right now.
If I’m the Dawgs (and, of course, if trading existed in college hoops), I wouldn’t trade Isaiah straight up for Jerome Randle. . . But, I’d think about it for a minute.
When Cal’s Patrick Christopher is on, he’s more dangerous than anyone in the Pac-10 because he gets rid of the ball so quickly. Talk about in your eye.
Cal’s big men, except for Jamal Boykin, are pretty terrible. I can’t see why Coach LoRo would start two bigs against them. Hopefully we’ll go with a third guard, Quincy and MBA when the Bears come to town on January 16th.
Max Zhang has the smallest knees I have ever seen.
The Huskies have these stretches when they miss way too many layups and three-foot shots. Frustrating.
Darnell Gant had a sneaky good game against Texas A&M. He buried two jumpers, grabbed seven boards, and contributed to A&M’s only relevant big man (Bryan Davis) going 0-7 from the field.
Scott Suggs is starting to use his athleticism to his advantage on the defensive end too. He took one charge, and should’ve gotten the call on another, and had a couple of other nice plays. I’m coming around on Scott, and it’s not just because he can shoot.
I saw a concerted effort by Matthew Bryan-Amaning against A&M to deny the ball into the post. He was trying to do something I’ve seen Tyreese Breshers do a bit: jumping around his defender to pick the pass into the post. It worked a few times tonight for Matthew who had three steals.
The Huskies need to work on their inbound passing from underneath the basket. Too many plays when the inbounder chucks a prayer to midcourt. I had bad visions of that Texas Tech play a few times on Tuesday night.
We can play with anyone in the country at Hec Ed. But, at this point there’s nothing more that the Huskies can do in this building to convince me that they can compete with the nation’s best. They need to bring it on the road.
Thanks for coming!