Tonight's The Dawgs' Best Chance at a Big Win
So. The Huskies. The team that's our city's best chance at a 2007 championship trophy, and they can't even beat the Cougs. Historical fact: No team has ever lost to Washington State University and gone on to win the championship of anything.
But here's the good news: because the Huskies are in the nation's best conference, they have six more games against ranked teams, and three against teams ranked in the top 10 (Oregon, Pittsburgh and UCLA). The Dawgs can still play their way in, but they'll have to beat at least one of those top teams. And tonight's game against Oregon may be their best shot.
Why? Well, for one thing, Ryan Appleby's going to have his most effective game of the year, even if he doesn't score a point. By hitting Aaron Brooks in the elbow with his face last season, Appleby got Oregon's leading scorer and the early favorite for Pac-10 player of the year on the conference's bad side--they suspended Brooks for tonight's game.
With Brooks out, Oregon will likely use tiny Tajuan Porter at point. Porter scared the shit out of us by scoring 93 points in his first three collegiate games, but he's been less effective in Pac-10 play, averaging only eight points a game. Because he's short, people compare Porter to Nate Robinson, but Robinson's game was slashing and scoring. Porter's is shooting, and since he's only 5-6, teams have figured out he can't score if you guard him.
Pac-10 teams have figured something else out, too--the Huskies' predictable half-court offense. What worked against schools that had neither the time nor the resources to scout the Huskies isn't working now. All nine conference teams, and possibly several pre-industrial Amazonian tribes, know that when Quincy Pondexter gets the ball on the right wing, he likes to drive left into the paint, then stop and look to drive or shoot. Stay on his right hip and you're golden. Jon Brockman's awful 360-dipsy-do move, which he executes with all the grace of a drunk stumbling over a garbage can, is getting dipsy-don't-ed by opposing forwards--Wazzu's Ivory Clark pinned his shot against the glass so effortlessly last week he must have seen it coming. Ryan Appleby and Phil Nelson are non-factors if you simply stand in front of them, and Justin Dentmon's just not quick enough to create his own shot against Pac-10 guards.
A healthy Spencer Hawes might be enough to compensate for the Dawgs' offensive shortcomings, but the guy lost twenty pounds from a stomach virus that hasn't yet said its goodbyes. Hard to expect much out of Hawes.
Still--painful as it is to watch, the Huskies' lack of a halfcourt offense isn't as fatal against Oregon as it is against a slow paced team like Washington State. Oregon likes to run, and the Huskies can run with them. If Oregon misses Brooks' speed and scoring as much as I think they will, and have a bad shooting night, the Dawgs could win a high-scoring game. But if Oregon starts hitting shots and getting time to set up on defense, you could be looking at a repeat of the Gonzaga or UCLA games.
The Oregon game isn't a "must-win" (though Saturday's game against Oregon State surely is). But it could be the marquee win the Huskies must have to make the NCAA tournament.
