Who were we tonight?

Watching the end of this “basketball game” I am disgusted. Not by the refs (something that normally happens) not by our opponent, but instead by my own Washington Huskies. What did we really see tonight from the Huskies? Did we see a team that was fired up to come back from their loss to WSU, looking to show that they deserve a top 25 ranking and a high seed in the NCAA tournament? Not at all, I saw a team who looked frustrated, there was no fire in our leaders, no fire in almost any of our players. Looking in our players eyes I was ready to call the game for OSU as of halftime. The only two players that I saw who actually looked like they wanted to play were Scott Suggs, and Terrance Ross. Suggs had a career night with 18 points on 5-12 all made shots being three pointers, he played solid defense and only racked up his fouls towards the end of the game intentionally fouling OSU players to save time. Terrance Ross didn’t have a big night numbers wise. He only made one shot, a tip dunk over at least one OSU player, but while he was in he was hustling. I would be lying if I said I don’t care if we lose as long as we play hard; I hate to see the Huskies lose; it ruins my night, it ruins my weekend, it even pisses off my girlfriend because I’m just not a happy person. The one thing I hate more than losing, is feeling like we didn’t even try to win. Sure the players put up shots and played defense (questionably sometimes) but they didn’t do the little things. We had no weak side help ( which OSU scored numerous baskets passing to) we didn’t dive on the floor for loose balls and we didn’t move on offense to get open. Isaiah Thomas, MBA and Justin Holiday combined tonight for 9 – 31 shooting for 25 points. Two weeks ago, I looked at them as a glorious triumvirate, they could control and win games practically on their own. Tonight they looked hapless, IT pleaded with the refs for calls, MBA picked up fouls and was left ineffective for most of the game, and Holiday simply looked defeated. Despite all of this, we were still in the game until the last five minutes. The whole game I watched waiting for someone aside from Suggs to take over, move on offense hustle on defense but it never happened. Watching this loss was worse than losing to WSU, in that game we were sloppy, but we actually appeared to be trying to win. I’m unsure how Saturday will go, but I guarantee that if we play the same way we did tonight for the rest of the season we won’t be celebrating any NCAA achievements this year, we will be lucky to make the NIT and we certainly won’t go far in that tournament either.