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Huskies Travel to Pullman, But Pac-12 Opener Scrapped

COVID issues for Washington State team force postponement of Wednesday night game.
Dan Raley|
Huskies Travel to Pullman, But Pac-12 Opener Scrapped
Huskies Travel to Pullman, But Pac-12 Opener Scrapped

The University of Washington men's basketball team made it to Pullman for what amounted to a long-distance practice only as COVID issues for Washington State forced postponement of Wednesday night's game.

This would have been the Pac-12 opener the UW (5-5 overall, 0-0 conference) simply hasn't been able to play following earlier games against UCLA and Arizona that didn't come off because of pandemic intrusions. 

The Huskies arrived by airplane in the southeastern Washington town on Tuesday and held a workout at Beasley Coliseum, though they still don't appear to be at full strength. The Cougars (8-5, 1-1) next informed them of positive tests among their players and the game was called off. 

Mike Hopkins' team has played just twice over the past month after dealing with its own COVID outbreak that has affected most of the team. Senior Jamal Bey, a 6-foot-6 returning starter, missed the previous game against Utah Valley and still doesn't appear back, after not showing up in photos sent back from the now aborted Pullman trip.

For the Huskies, this has been the season that just won't launch. They were the first team nationwide to cancel or postpone a game because of COVID. They have a new mix of players still getting to know each other. 

The host Cougars likely would have taken one look at this group and asked, "Who are these guys?"

For sure, the UW offer up mostly new faces compared to what was trotted out the season before, with players pulled from the transfer portal, junior-college and McDonald's All-America ranks.

Previously, the Huskies answered to the slogan "Tougher together" but they finished 5-21 — the second-worst record in school history — and had six players immediately enter the transfer portal.

This crew is a more respectable with its .500 record and still answers to the same motto, with the cohesion angle a little more believable this time.

The new Huskies are built around four players who grew up in Seattle or Tacoma and ventured outside the area to initially play the college game, only to return all at once to try and rescue Hopkins' flagging program.

While friendship and home surroundings were big factors, newcomers Terrell Brown Jr., Emmitt Matthews Jr., PJ Fuller and Daejon Davis no doubt came back because they wanted more prominent basketball roles.

Brown, a 6-foot-3 senior guard, averaged just 7.3 points per game for Arizona, where last season he was the team's sixth-leading scorer, but he now ranks as the nation's sixth-leading point-producer at 21.4 ppg for the Huskies.

A 6-foot-7 junior forward, Matthews averaged 7.7 points last season for West Virginia, making him the team's sixth-leading scorer, but he's upped his production level to 10.9 at the UW, where he's the second-leading scorer behind Brown.

Fuller, a 6-foot-4 junior guard, averaged 5.8 for TCU as a starter, ranking him fifth among the Horned Frogs, but he scores 9.9 a game for the Huskies as the first man off the bench and is the team's third-highest point-producer.

Finally, Davis, a 6-foot-3 senior guard, was a 10.1 scorer for Stanford playing less than half a season last year, but he's dipped to 8.3 for the UW, which ranks him fifth on the team.

However, a drawback for this Husky team is it has had no one emerge inside who can score and take the pressure off the perimeter. Nate Roberts, a 6-foot-11 junior and a returning starter, averages just 3.9 ppg and can't create shots. 

Which means the UW will never be better than a break-even team this season without a more viable scoring threat in the paint. 

That's one reason the Huskies took 10 very winnable non-conference outings and came away with a split at best.

This is why Hopkins remains on shaky ground as a fifth-year Husky coach, with very little success to show for the past 24 months running the program. Over parts of three seasons now, his teams have lost 39 of their past 53 games. 

This outing with the Cougars would have marked the first of four consecutive road encounters for the UW, no easy task.

On Monday, the Huskies next will try to play one of their earlier postponed games against Arizona (11-1, 1-0) in Tucson in a game that won't be televised. They then head out for games at Utah (8-4, 1-1) on Thursday, Jan. 6, and at Colorado (9-3, 1-1) on Sunday, Jan. 9.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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