UW Men's Basketball Working Through Early Season Struggles
Over the first three games to start the 2019-20 season Washington head coach Mike Hopkins has already learned the good, the bad, and seen plenty of ugly in the first half of each game thus far.
The good news for Hopkins, now in his third season at the helm of the Huskies, is that the team has plenty of time to fine tune their form before conference play begins in January. In fact, one of the key contributing factors to some of the woes the team has encountered is time.
UW learned seven days prior to the start of the season it would have sophomore point guard Quade Green eligible. While Green and the team waited for the NCAA to determined whether or not he would be granted a transfer waiver he was unable to play.
That has, in part, caused the Husky offense to be sluggish early in games.
Green, a former five-star recruit out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who signed with Kentucky out of Neumann-Goretti, was ranked the No. 22 overall prospect by Rivals in the 2017 class.
Already this season Green has done something that he never did at UK. In the first three games against Baylor, Mount St. Mary’s and Tennessee, he played 32, 34 and 33 minutes respectively.
Last season, before he elected to transfer to UW after nine games, Green had three games where he played at least 20 minutes. As a true freshman Green only had two stretches where he played 30-plus minutes in consecutive games.
In back-to-back road games at LSU and Tennessee he played 31 and 33 minutes for the Wildcats on Jan. 3, 2018 and Jan. 6, 2018. It took more than another month before Green played another stretch of consecutive 30-plus minute games for UK.
Following the Huskies exhibition game verses Western Washington on Oct. 31, and again after UW defeated Mount St. Mary’s 56-46 on Nov. 12, Green stayed on the floor at HecEd to work on his three-point shooting.
Green made his first two three-pointers of the season in the 75-62 loss in Toronto, Canada to the Volunteers on Saturday. As a team UW have combined to make 10 of 36 shots from behind the arc in the last two games after converting 7 of 15 in the Huskies upset win over Baylor.
As the sophomore continues to grow on the floor its expected that the team will evolve out of slow starts to games as the season progresses.
Given that UW is 2-1 after its first three games it is hard to find any major flaw that can’t be workout out with time. Most of the promising moments have come when Hopkins has found a group of five that gel together.
Both freshmen, Isaiah Stewart and Jaden McDaniels, have averaged 33-plus minutes per game and sit second and third on the team averaging 15 and 12.7 points respectively.
Each are behind guard Nahziah Carter who leads the Huskies scoring 18.3 points per game.
The junior also leads the team shooting 46 percent from deep (6 of 13). As the trio continue to build on each game together the key for UW will be to develop a consistent fourth scoring option.
Against Tennessee, junior forward Hameir Wright missed all three of his attempts from behind the arc after shooting 50 percent in the first two games from three-point range (4 of 8).
Hopkins said after the victory over Mount St. Mary’s that Wright had made a focus on improving his three-point shooting this season.
It’s expected that not every game will be a great shooting night, but as UW continues to build on what is anticipated to be another NCAA Tournament season, eliminating the number of poor shooting performances is crucial.