Ihenacho Had Just One Chance With the Big Ten and It Was Hard

The Husky point guard went through a difficult initiation while moving up a level of competition.

Tyree Ihenacho takes one to the hoop against Washington State. / Skylar Lin

At the beginning of the season, University of Washington basketball coach Danny Sprinkle singled out point guard Tyree Ihenacho as the best athlete on his team, someone with an intriguing skill set.

However, all would not end perfectly for this transfer from North Dakota, James Madison and North Dakota, in that order, who had received such a ringing endorsement.

Coming down the stretch this season, Sprinkle made Ihenacho, a 6-foot-4, senior from Prior Lake, Minnesota, come off the bench for the final nine games and the first-year coach, in turn, readily acknowledged his team had gone without an adequate playmaker.

Such are the risks of the transfer portal when you sort through the accumulated talent for your team needs, try to mesh it together and hope for the best.

"When you bring in all these new guys, it's hard to click right away," Ihenacho said after beating Washington State 89-73 in December. "It's all about staying consistent, and not staying too high or too happy over this victory."

Tyree Ihenacho sets up a play against Maryland. / Skylar Lin Visuals

By all accounts, Ihenacho was a good teammate, someone who could run the floor, get after it on defense and badly wanted to be the offensive leader Sprinkle was seeking.

Yet the Big Ten does not treat newcomers kindly with its heightened, knock-down, drag-out style of play, where the officiating crews generally let an enormous amount of contact go unpunished and players hope to come out of it alive.

Transfers such as Ihenacho likely need a season just to get used to the rough stuff in order to eventually make plays. Unfortunately for him, he was a fifth-year player who received just one shot at it.

Ihenacho ended up starting 20 of 31 games overall and averaged 3.2 points and 2.8 rebounds per outing.

He had just three double-figure scoring performances, with a high of 15 against Nevada. He went scoreless in 10 contests.

Shooting was not really his forte as he connected on just 39.6 percent of his attempts, and struggled mightily to sink just 4 of 30 3-pointers -- a microscopic 13.3 percent.

Tyree Ihenacho dribbles up the floor against Illinois. / Skylar Lin Visuals

As a playmaker, Ihenacho averaged a modest 2 assists a game, with a high of 8 against Seattle Pacific, not nearly enough to have teams in the conference backpedaling.

Ihenacho will have to settle for what he received over 31 games, such is the nature of this beast that is the Big Ten.

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