Washington’s 75-62 Win Shows Signs of Progress

With all players recovered from various injuries and ready to play, Romar’s players put together perhaps their most complete performance of the year against a Cal Poly team that looked like a perfect candidate to give Washington some Albany, Colorado State style trouble based on their comeback victory over a very talented UCLA team earlier this season. While that might be surprising in and of itself, what is even more surprising is the way that it came about: defense and rebounding.

A Cal Poly team that was number one in the nation at limiting turnovers was harassed into 12 tonight, while Aziz N’Diaye and Desmond Simmons helped to scrap and muscle Washington into a 29-15 victory on the boards. Simmons, in particular, impressed with his relentless pursuit of loose basketballs. His 7 boards were less than N’Diaye’s 9, but it seemed that each and every one of them required dives onto the hardwood.

Dec 20, 2012; Seattle, WA, USA; Washington Huskies center Aziz N

Offensively, it was like, for one game, things went exactly how all the writer types predicted it would during the year. Lots of C.J. Wilcox with balanced secondary scoring from Suggs, Gaddy, and N’Diaye. Wilcox had an efficient 21 points on only 13 shots while Suggs finished with 12, N’Diaye with 11, and Gaddy with 10.

While the final score looks fairly competitive, Cal Poly was held to 23 points in the first half, and with 10 minutes left in the 2nd they had only increased that total to 29. Once the game was clearly in hand for the Huskies, the intensity let up and Cal Poly managed to hit several open shots to keep the final score pretty respectable, but this game was all Washington.

Tough to tell if this was a one game thing, or if the Huskies are finally ready to start playing better basketball with everyone healthy, but either way, now is the time to start showing positive signs of progress with the conference season beginning after the New Year.