By Lauren Kirschman
The News Tribune
Matisse Thybulle watches the eyes.
When he’s defending, that’s how the Washington men’s basketball team’s senior guard keeps track of the players behind him. It’s also how he knows where the ball is headed next. Sometimes opponents will make a concerted effort not to look toward a certain area of the court. They think they can trick him, but the tactic actually makes Thybulle’s job easier. No matter how hard they try, he said with a laugh, they always sneak glances.
The truly great guards, they’re distinct. When Thybulle is playing pick-up or in the Seattle Pro-Am, facing players like the Phoenix Suns’ Jamal Crawford, he notices the difference. Those players constantly scan the floor, Thybulle said. It doesn’t matter where they look. They’re aware of everything that’s going on.
“At (the college) level,” Thybulle said, “guys are either looking directly where they want to pass the ball or they’re trying not to and they’re taking peaks at it. It’s pretty obvious, at least for me.”
But what’s obvious to Thybulle isn’t obvious to most. That’s what makes the 2018 Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year such a nightmare for opposing offenses. He’s fourth on the conference’s all-time steals list with 252, fourth in blocks with 140. He’s also the only player in the country averaging at least 2.2 blocks and 2.6 steals per game.
Thybulle is 6-foot-6, athletic and quick with a deceptive 7-foot wingspan. His reputation is well-established in the Pac-12, so much so that teams purposely avoid passing in his direction. Opponents, especially in conference games, will flip plays to move away from him.
But Thybulle has still recorded four or more steals in a game six times this season. He’s also had three or more blocks six times. In the Huskies’ win over Stanford on Thursday, he had his first steal within the first 15 seconds. He finished with five.
Ask his teammates and coaches what makes him so good and you’ll get a variety of answers: Anticipation, reflexes, a nearly unparalleled understanding of the game. Ask Thybulle and he’ll add a little bit of acting to the mix.
“I’d say a combination of fast reflexes and just generally having a feeling of where the person with the ball is trying to pass it,” he said, then grinned. “’ll try to pretend like I don’t know.”
Defense is fun for Thybulle. He likes the feeling of being one step ahead. It shows in practice, when he’ll often laugh and joke after making a play on his teammate. It shows, too, in a quiet room in Alaska Airlines Arena where Thybulle sits to discuss his technique. As he talks, he can’t stop smiling.
From the time Thybulle was young, he was more athletic than most of the players around him. He was in fifth or sixth grade when coaches started putting him in the middle of the press.
He began playing almost like a free safety in football, roaming the floor so he could jump into routes and pick passes. It comes naturally, he said, that keen ability to anticipate. From the time he started playing basketball, he had a knack for defense, for getting in passing lanes and blocking jump shots.
It just took him a while to really understand why.
From the outside, it’s easy to explain. You can see it every time he makes a move, getting a hand on the ball before anyone can react. Teammate Jaylen Nowell said it’s like everything else is in slow motion.
“The ball is up and you’re like, that’s always going to get to the guy,” Nowell said. “And then he just comes out of nowhere and sticks his hand out and all of the sudden he has the ball. It was one of the most interesting things to watch as he grew in that category.”
It feels like slow motion to Thybulle, too. Sometimes when he’s watching film, he’s surprised at how fast things happen. He knows he must be thinking quickly in order to make the plays he does, but it never seems that way on the court.
“For me, it’s all these logical steps,” Thybulle said. “None of it for me is really guessing. There’s no magic for me. I read the signs and I act accordingly. When I was young and doing that, not realizing what I was doing, my coaches would make a big deal of it.”
His head coach now makes a big deal of it, too. Mike Hopkins said it’s like Thybulle is able to predict what’s going to happen five minutes ahead of time.
“He kind of sees where they’re attacking you,” Hopkins said, “and then he kind of sees where they’re going and then he just baits you.”
Thybulle likes to joke that it’s actually mind control.
“Because I get inside the guy’s head,” he said, “it’s almost like he’s telling me where he’s going with it even though he’s trying not to.”
It amazes UW point guard David Crisp that Thybulle still has so much defensive success. Sometimes, he said, it looks like opponents are just throwing him the ball. By the time they pass it, Thybulle is already there.
“You wouldn’t think he gets that many because people know what he does,” Crisp said. “You’d think they’d be more cautious. But it kind of looks like he’s really not paying attention. He’ll kind of play cat-and-mouse and set you up for it.”
It’s not only Thybulle’s ability to anticipate that makes him so dangerous. Physically, Hopkins said, he just covers an extraordinary amount of space. It also helps that he takes defense personally.
To illustrate, Hopkins launched into a story about Thybulle and walk-on guard Quin Barnard from shortly after Hopkins took over at UW. Not many players can stump Thybulle, but he was having the hardest time blocking one of Barnard’s shots.
“I feel like I’ve blocked enough people’s jump shots to know what I’m doing,” Thybulle said. “For some reason, Quin always deceived me, and Quin’s not even tall. Quin’s a little guy.”
But when Thybulle would close out on his shots, the 6-foot Barnard would either pump fake and drive by him or shoot over him. For some reason, Thybulle was having difficulty getting the timing down.
Then one day during a scrimmage, the ball came to Barnard in the deep corner. As Hopkins tells it, Thybulle came soaring in out of nowhere.
“It was like, ‘Oh, Superman is here,’” Hopkins said. “He just flies in and blocks it out of bounds and he just said, ‘I finally got him, I finally got him.’ It’s a really cool story and you just see that it’s become a thing. Matisse has become a thing.”
Thybulle believes what he does can be replicated. So much of it, he said, is just awareness. He can help his teammates with that, and often does. Thybulle didn’t have his. best game in UW’s win over Utah. He scored just four points and didn’t record a steal for the first time this season, but he was still coaching on the bench.
He’s seen the improvement in his teammates, most notably in sophomore Nahziah Carter. When Carter gets more time at the top of the zone, Thybulle said, he’s going to be dangerous.
“I just don’t think the things I see are obvious to other people,” Thybulle said. “When they miss it, I try to make a point to tell them so they are aware right after the play that there was something to see so that the next time, they can be aware of it ahead of time and when they see it, make a play on it.”
If you watch Thybulle play, even just once, odds are you’ll see him race down the court on a fast break to block a layup or swipe a ball away from behind. That’s why he’s so sure his success can be mimicked.
So much of it, he said, is just effort.
“If a guy gets by me, I just see it as another opportunity to make a play because I don’t think a play is ever over,” Thybulle said. “The play really is never over. If you don’t give up, you’d be surprised what you can achieve.”
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