It’s time to be Tougher Together once again! Washington Basketball is back, and they have some unfinished business to attend to.
Are you excited Dawg fans? Washington basketball is back tonight, and they get to open their season with a national ranking, and a televised game on ESPN! Tune in tonight at 7:30 PST to check out your #25 Washington Huskies take on projected lottery pick Charles Bassey and the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers. Noah Dickerson and Sam Timmins will have their hands full in the paint with that matchup, but hopefully, Mike Hopkins‘ 2-3 zone will be able to contain Bassey. The Huskies are one of the most experienced teams in the NCAA and will be able to use that to their advantage this season.
Senior Leaders
Along with Dickerson, Dominic Green, David Crisp, and Matisse Thybulle are all heading into their senior year, and they thrived under Hopkins in year one. Another year of growing together is going to do wonders for them and is going to make them a national force to be reckoned with. Thybulle probably has a chance to win national defensive player of the year, let alone defending his title as Pac-12 defensive player of the year.
Watch for Thybulle to shoot up NBA draft boards as he shows off everything he can do at the top of the 2-3 zone. He has a very high ceiling and if can show off his offensive game this season, he could sneak into the end of the first round.
The Young Guns
What about the freshmen? The Huskies got two highly touted, four-star recruits in Jamal Bey and Bryan Penn-Johnson, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to see the floor very much, at least at the start of the season. Jaylen Nowell should take up a big chunk of Bey’s minutes, and Penn-Johnson is sitting behind a few veterans in Dickerson and Timmins. If they can continue to improve in practice, we should see them playing more as the season goes along. But at least to start the year, if the exhibition games are telling of anything, they won’t see much more than mop-up minutes at the start of the year.
Bold Predictions
Yeah, these are coming in flaming hot. Two bold takes to think about this season:
- Nahziah Carter is going to take a huge leap forward this season, and put himself into contention for All Pac-12 first team, and Pac-12 Player of the Year.
- Riley Sorn is going to have the biggest impact of all the freshman. The 7’3 center from Richland, WA. is going to be a defensive and rebounding specialist, and will work himself into the rotation by the end of the season.