{"id":2200,"date":"2016-03-11T20:09:22","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T20:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=2200"},"modified":"2016-03-11T20:09:22","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T20:09:22","slug":"huskies-were-better-but-could-they-have-been-even-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=2200","title":{"rendered":"Huskies were better, but could they have been even better?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Terry<\/a><\/p>\n

TERRY MOSHER<\/p>\n

\"Dejounte<\/a><\/p>\n

DEJOUNTE MURRAY<\/p>\n

After reading a Seattle Times story today I almost fell for believing the Washington Husky men overachieved this season by compiling an 18-14 overall record and 9-9-mark in the Pac-12.<\/p>\n

If you go by the pre-season prediction of media covering the conference then the Huskies did overachieve. The media picked the Huskies to finish 11th<\/sup>, just ahead of Washington State.<\/p>\n

Well, the media got Washington State right. The Cougars were awful and finished the season on a 17-game losing streak to finish 9-22 for the season. And overall I would say the media got most of it right, or close to right, although Arizona was the pre-season conference favorite and the Wildcats finished tied for third with California behind regular-season champion Oregon (which was picked to finish fourth), and runner-up Utah (picked to finish third).<\/p>\n

The general feeling of the young Huskies (seven freshmen played a lot of minutes with four of them starting) is that they played better than expected. And I would say that is right. But that is only part of the story.<\/p>\n

I want to say right off that coach Lorenzo Romar is a great guy, a great human being. If you can rate people from one to 10 with 10 being the best, then based on goodness Romar would be close to 10 if not 10.<\/p>\n

But we are not dealing with goodness when it comes to rating how well a person coaches. If the coach is a bad dude \u2011 and you can argue that there have been more than a few pacing the floor in front of team benches over the years \u2013 but is a heck of a coach when it comes to recruiting and Xs and Os, and produces winners, then that is what fans will loudly cheer and big cigar school donors will applaud and open their wallets and we who are long-distance on-lookers will probably look the other way and say nothing.<\/p>\n

So being a jerk does not disqualify a person from being a coach, and a good if not great coach. And being good like Romar does not disqualify him either. Except, I don\u2019t think he did a good job this season.<\/p>\n

The reason I say that is because I don\u2019t believe this young Husky team improved all that much over the course of 32 games. They were fun and exciting to watch, but they were also frustrating to watch. A great play would be followed by the dumbest of the dumb mistake, and that never seemed to change as you think it would just by the experie4nce of playing games.<\/p>\n

Maybe I\u2019m being too harsh. Maybe I\u2019m missing the bigger picture. But then again maybe I\u2019m not.<\/p>\n

I can argue against myself that the Huskies were hurt by not having that big, burly center that could punish anybody who dared to enter the paint, and that could collect a bushel of rebounds and score down low.<\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t have, for example, a guy like Utah\u2019s Jacob Poeltl, a 7-foot, 250-pound giant who was the conference player of the year. You can argue that a lot of teams didn\u2019t have a Poeltl, but my counter agreement is that they didn\u2019t have to be Poeltl. They just needed somebody like him that was an enforcer down low that would erase what was the biggest problem for these Huskies: lack of offensive rebounding ability.<\/p>\n

These Huskies were terrible on blocking out and stopping teams from getting second and third shots on their possessions. That offensive rebounding inability was the direct cause for their loss to Oregon in Thursday\u2019s quarterfinal game in the Pac-12 Conference Tournament.<\/p>\n

You would think that with the leaping ability of 6-9 Malik Dime, who set a school record for blocks this season, and 6-9 Marquese Chriss and 6-8 Noah Dickerson, the Huskies would have done much, much better on the offensive boards.<\/p>\n

So who do you blame for not figuring out in 32 games how to block out?<\/p>\n

You\u2019re right. That falls on the coach. Why didn\u2019t they get better?<\/p>\n

And why did Romar insist on playing man-to-man defense almost exclusively the entire year? Why not change it up once in a while just to create a different problem for offenses?<\/p>\n

You know, these Huskies lost nine games by six points or less. If they would have won just four of those games they would have finished 22-10 and probably would have gained an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n

So despite my misgivings about coaching and not seeing the improvement one would expect, the Huskies were not that far away from really upsetting pre-season predictions.<\/p>\n

Now the Huskies are likely headed to the NIT. But if they can\u2019t suddenly improve their offensive rebounding that post-season may end soon rather than later. Then the next question about them will begin: What will happen to their best two young freshmen \u2013 Chriss and Dejounte Murray.<\/p>\n

NBAdraft.net has both going in the first round of the June 23 NBA draft, with Murray going with the 11th<\/sup> pick and Chriss with the 30th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

So will Chriss and Murray return?<\/p>\n

Would you?<\/p>\n

If somebody is willing to pay you a few million to play you would be hard pressed not to take the money and run.<\/p>\n

So we will see.<\/p>\n

In the meanwhile, I\u2019m going to go check my pennies and see if I have enough of them to get a cup of ice water.<\/p>\n

Be well pal.<\/p>\n

Be careful out there<\/p>\n

Have a great day.<\/p>\n

You are loved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TERRY MOSHER DEJOUNTE MURRAY After reading a Seattle Times story today I almost fell for believing the Washington Husky men…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2201,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-column","category-mosher","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2202,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200\/revisions\/2202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}