I posted this one on Buzzer Beater after the Huskies’ thrilling win over Arizona on Thursday night. Then they went and got beat by Arizona State. Good thing I boldly declared them back.

Tonight’s Seattle basketball fan was faced with quite a dilemma: the middling Huskies on FSN or the post-Wally Z, pre-Ira Newble Sonics on TNT. While I’ve found that a season of covering the NBA has made it increasingly difficult to enjoy the comparatively sloppy and uneven play of college ball (I know I’m probably in the minority on that one), and while I love watching Brandon Roy (whose Blazers the Sonics were playing), I couldn’t turn down a high energy UW/Arizona matchup at Hec Ed. It was the right decision.

Facing a Wildcat team with three likely first-round picks, the Dawgs played like yesteryear’s shoulder-chipped, Conroy-Robinson-Roy-Jones squads. Particular credit goes to Venoy Overton, the seemingly ambidextrous, left-handed, pint-sized freshman dynamo who pushes the pace like no Husky since Nate Robinson, time and again weaving back and forth on the heels of retreating defenders before finishing with an improbable lay-up. (Tonight’s ‘and-1′, in which he drew contact from an Arizona big man and made a high-arching, right-handed six-footer while nearly parallel with the floor probably takes the cake.)

While Overton set the tone with his forays to the hoop and his harassment of Arizona star Jerryd Bayless, he was hardly alone in the intensity and aggressiveness he brought to the game. Jon Brockman continued his season-long domination of the Pac-10 paint, Quincy Pondexter played smart and not too timid, Tim Morris created plays with his athleticism, and pretty much every other Husky who saw floor time had a solid game. I’m gushing like Chris Matthews after a Barack Obama speech, but I’ll be damned if it’s not fun to watch my underdog alma mater stick it to the Chase Budinger/Jerryd Bayless Zach Morris/AC Slater combo.

One final thing, the Husky coaching staff must be given credit for having turned a bad defensive team into a good one over the course of the season (stellar defensive performances in 3 of the last 4 games). Such a swing is something you’ll rarely see in an NBA team–partly because the season is long enough for a pro team to regress to its mean, but also because college teams, much more than pro ones, are always works-in-progress. Washington’s team defense was superb, with the hedges on and traps of Jared Bayless flustering him and significantly disrupting Arizona’s offense.

I’ve come to the point in the Husky post where it says “insert obligatory/lame ‘dawg’ pun here.”

Why must I chase the cat? Ain’t nothin’ but the dawg in me!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 12:27 am and is filed under Roundball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.