BOISE, Idaho – It was the biggest question coming into Saturday’s second-round NCAA Tournament game: How would the size-deficient Washington men’s basketball team handle the much taller Pacific Tigers?
The answer? Pretty well, thank you.
Washington used its quickness to pressure Pacific full court, preventing the Tigers from getting into a good flow on offense. The Huskies helped in the post on every opportunity and deflected several passes.
The result was a 44.8 shooting percentage for Pacific and a 97-79 Washington victory.
“We talked before the game,” Washington coach Lorenzo Romar said. “We didn’t talk about offense. We didn’t talk about scoring 97 points. We said if we would defend and rebound, we would win the game.”
Check and check. Not only did the Huskies defend, they outrebounded Pacific 35-31.
“We have a lot of great athletes,” Bobby Jones said. “We aren’t tall but we all go to the boards. It’s hard to keep us off the glass when everyone is coming.”
Washington’s effort came against a team that was shooting 50 percent for the season and out-rebounding foes by nearly six a game. The Tigers started a front line that had two 6-foot-9 players and a 6-7 forward, and subs that were 6-10 and 6-9. Washington’s tallest regular is 6-8 Mike Jensen, and he missed the last 11 minutes of the first half with foul trouble.
“It’s a full effort for us on defense and rebounding,” Will Conroy said. “As guards, we can’t just defend the perimeter. We have to drop down all the time to help because we don’t have the size. But we’ve been doing it all year and it’s worked so far.”
“We don’t have a lot of heavy bodies,” Romar said. “But we think we have heavy back-side help. We are undersized, so we can’t win a battle one-against-one on most teams we play because we’re just not as big. So we play gang defense. We play together with five against whoever has that basketball. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to survive.”
Pacific’s leading scorer, 6-9 Guillaume Yango, did have success inside, scoring 17 points on 6-for-10 shooting. But second-leading scorer Christian Maraker was held to 12 points, 10 coming in a span of 1:37 of the first half. No other player reached double figures for Pacific, which made 8 of 24 3-pointers after connection on 10 of 20 in a first-round win over Pittsburgh.
“I kind of blame it on myself,” Maraker said. “I didn’t step up when I needed to.”
“I didn’t think Christian defensively was engaged in our plans and how we should do things,” Pacific coach Bob Thomason said. “He was sitting over there next to me a little. So I probably defensed him better than Washington did.”
In fact, Thomason questioned how good a defensive team the Huskies truly are.
“You don’t classify them as a great defensive team, but they cause you a lot of problems,” Thomason said. “We had no turnovers in the second half. I can’t remember that happening one time this year. If you’re a great defensive team, you probably create some turnovers. The problem defensively is they are so quick at every position that it causes problems.”
“That’s the fastest defense we’ve seen all season,” said Pacific point guard David Doubley, the Big West Player of the Year. “Their team speed is exceptional. You can’t really prepare for a team that’s that quick. They shut us down pretty good tonight. They were denying everything as much as possible. They were going to do everything they could to not let us get the ball in the post.”
Jones said Washington has been hearing criticism all season about everything, and more doubts don’t do anything but motivate them.
“All you have to do is look at the results,” Jones said. “Just because we aren’t tall doesn’t mean we can’t defend or rebound. Our quickness has given teams problems all year. All that’s important is we’re winning. A lot of teams who doubt us have lost to us.”
That includes Pacific.
“They really played well, and when they play well, they’re going to be in the game with anyone in the country,” Thomason said. “But they do have vulnerability defensively to give people easy shots and second shots. We’ll see how that stands up in Albuquerque.”
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