The Morning Haul: 8/1

Well, today is the start of a new situation here at Husky Haul. It was during this month last year that I took over for site founder Mark Knight (now the Assistant Editorial Director for the entire Fansided college division). With no real sportswriting or site running experience, I dove in just in time for football season to begin, and over the course of both football and basketball season, I learned from my mistakes and found my groove.

Then at the beginning of April I went off to spend a quarter studying in Rome, and that meant that I could no longer realistically serve as editor. Evan Webeck, who had spent the last couple months as a stand out staff writer here, stepped up and took my place. And for the last four months he has done a terrific job writing fresh content despite it being the doldrums of the off season.

Now Evan is ready to step up once again, this time to start a brand new Seattle-area site called Emerald City Swag. He will cover all the major Seattle sports teams, a sort of umbrella stretching over the Huskies, Seahawks, Mariners, and Sounders. He is going to do a fantastic job getting the site off of the ground, but he can always use help. Please follow the ECS twitter @EmeraldCitySwag and check out the site, which went online today.

So, this means that I am the sole editor once again, so the bulk of the posts will be from me. I will, of course, be joined by staff writers Paul Somerstein, Erik Erickson, and Jackson Safon. They combine to form the best staff Husky Haul has had in my time here. I’m more excited than I can say to head into the football/basketball half of the year with them at my side.

As far as the Morning Haul goes, I probably won’t do it every day. I stuck to it as a daily post for the first couple months of football season last year, and it just got a bit tedious. Think more like three or four times a week. So much of the quality Husky content is on paid sites, which I don’t bother linking to, especially with the Seattle Times blogs now guarded by a paywall, and I won’t bother writing up the haul if I don’t have stories to link.

Stories You Should Probably Read:

Ben Knibbe of the Dawg Pound is attempting to define Washington’s defense. UW Dawg Pound is a great site, and with Condotta gone and both Times blogs charging $ these days, there’s probably no single site I will link to more often.

Ted Miller has a preseason cornerback review, and in it he lists Washington as in “good shape.” That sounds about right to me, though if he had logged them under “we’ll see” I wouldn’t exactly be up in arms about it. Trufant is gone, and no one else has proven themselves an above-average starter. It’s all expectations, though with Peters, Ducre, Watson, and Dixon, it isn’t unreasonable to think that two out of four can step up.

Former-Husky (well, he’ll always be a Husky…) Nate Robinson, who recently signed with the Nuggets, scored 44 points at a New York City Pro-am game. Kyrie Irving, who he was going up against, dropped 47. I suppose that pretty much checks out. Irving couldn’t stop Nate, but Nate didn’t play a ton of defense on him either.