Inside The Huskies

Huskies Grade Near Bottom In Andy Katz's Big Ten Basketball Power Rankings

Unfortunately for the UW, the insider personally witnessed the USC blowout.

Dan Raley

Huskies guard Mekhi Mason (0), guard Tyree Ihenacho (6), guard Tyler Harris (8) and guard DJ Davis (4) during break in the action.
Huskies guard Mekhi Mason (0), guard Tyree Ihenacho (6), guard Tyler Harris (8) and guard DJ Davis (4) during break in the action. / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

Before the season began, someone with a Big Ten website predicted the University of Washington basketball team would finish dead last in the conference.

At the time, it seemed like an uninformed if not overly harsh decision, considering the Danny Sprinkle-coached Huskies would be built around 6-foot-8 power forward Great Osobor, the reigning Mountain West Player of the Year from his time spent at Utah State.

This week, Andy Katz -- a college basketball insider as plugged in as anyone across the NCAA landscape and affiliated with the Big Ten Network -- put the UW at No. 17 in his latest conference power rankings, or next to last behind Minnesota.

His was not a wildly detached forecast. This previous weekend, Katz personally was in attendance at Alaska Airlines Arena for the Huskies' humiliating 85-61 loss to USC, witnessing every last missed shot, errant pass and white flag of surrender raised.

What he saw was a newly put together yet surprisingly passive UW team (7-3 overall, 0-2 Big Ten) built mostly on transfers that likely won't be headed for the NCAA Tournament, that will be just a stopgap giving Sprinkle time to bring in all of those highly rated players he just signed out of the high school and junior college ranks for next year.

Meantime, the coach felt the need to get tough with his guys for the following game against Eastern Washington, and an 87-69 victory with better energy resulted.

"Getting our butts kicked on Saturday -- they had no choice," Sprinkle said of the turnaround from the USC outing. "I told them if they'e not playing hard, they won't play; I don't care if we play five guys the whole game. That should be non-negotiable."

Clearly these Huskies haven't caught on with the local populace having played in six lightly attended home games. Local basketball fans basically don't know who these guys are and haven't found anything to pique their interest to come out and learn more.

Osobor sounded like an intriguing player coming in, especially after his agent revealed that the big man would receive $2 million for this season in name, image and licensing proceeds. While he's a stronger rebounder than most and can dunk in an explosive manner, he is extremely limited as an offensive player.

As the NBA scouts willl take note, he doesn't finish well. He doesn't offer a mid-range jumper much, which is an absolute must to make the move to the next level.

With few exceptions, this team doesn't shoot well around the perimeter. DJ Davis, a Butler transfer and a one-time All-Big West guard for UC-Irvine, hasn't looked comfortable since he arrived in Montlake. His teammates and coaches call him the best shooter on this Husky squad, yet he's hitting just 27.9 percent from the floor, 26.8 from behind the 3-point line.

Most of all, these guys look all out of sorts. Sprinkle says they've played scared at times. Players such as Rice transfer Mekhi Mason have acknowledged the Big Ten has been a step up in college basketball for nearly everyone and it's been a tough adjustment.

The UW , however, presents ample opportunity for these guys from previous basketball stops as obscure as Rhode Island, North Dakota and Portland to showcase their games. Yet while they've pumped up their record by beating lower-level teams, the coming conference match-ups might be an equally unsettling experience.

One third of the way through the season, these Huskies have at least 22 outings, with Washington State next up on Wednesday, to show they're better than the Big Ten's No. 17 team.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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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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