Huskies Fall to Cal on Missed Opportunities

Huskies didn’t play a smart game of basketball, it wasn’t ugly but it wasn’t smart. UW missed some big opportunities to take the lead and allowed too many chances for Cal to keep the lead and build on the lead.

The final shot for the tie with 8 seconds left came down to Darnell Gant who hadn’t made a shot the entire game from the field on eight attempts. He also was 0-5 on three attempts up to that point. Lorenzo Romar was showing confidence in his senior and drew up a play for him to take a game-tying shot in the final seconds, it came up short. Gant finished with 0-9 shooting and 0-6 from three.

However, this wasn’t the only missed opportunity, many others affected the final in this game. Here are my thoughts on other missed opportunities:

• Abdul Gaddy had two missed layups that were easy buckets but neither rolled in for him.
• Romar was called for a technical foul after he felt the referee wrongly called a foul. This led to a four point play for the Golden Bears and what would have been a two point game became a five point game.
• Aziz N’Diaye picked up some unlucky or wrongly called fouls and he seemed to be the only one that was effective inside for the majority of the game. These fouls caused him to spend extra time on the bench.
• The Dawgs were out rebounded in this game. Cal is a team with no real depth for big-men, the Golden Bears best rebounder is a guard, Allen Crabbe, and yet UW wasn’t able to capitalize on this.

This game didn’t go the Huskies way but if the team would have been able to play a healthy CJ Wilcox, would things have looked differently? Certainly, and this loss shouldn’t discourage Husky fans but should only indicate the growing pains of this young team.

This game easily could have been an ugly one for the Huskies, as losses often have been for UW this season, but they were able to keep their composure and climb back into this one and almost win it. They kept it close and missed opportunities is what assured them the loss.