Pac-12 Tournament: Washington-Stanford Preview
By Ben Renner
The Pac-12 Tournament is here, and with its advent tomorrow afternoon, the Huskies seek to climb their way back into the National Championship Tournament conversation.
The Huskies are the number eight seed in the Pac-12 Tournament thanks to their 9-9 Pac-12 record and a complicated tie-breaking system based on their head-to-head matchups against the conference’s top teams. The Huskies were tied with Oregon State and USC but ended up as the eighth seed due to their record against Arizona and California (0-3).
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The Huskies play in the first game of the Pac-12 Tournament at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas tomorrow at noon against Stanford. The Huskies have only played Stanford once this year, winning at home 64-53. If they can handle the Cardinal again, they face the number one seed Oregon on Thursday. The Huskies will need to beat Stanford tomorrow and Oregon on Thursday to have a shot of getting to the National Tournament as an at-large bid.
If the Huskies win four games in four days, they’ll earn an automatic bid to the Big Dance. Coach Lorenzo Romar has his team rested and rejuvenated after only playing one game in eight days heading to the Pac-12 Tournament. He hopes that this period of reflection and rest will calm the young Huskies after an up-and-down season.
And the Huskies have much to be proud of this season. After being picked to finish 11th in the Pac-12 to start the year, they started strong and took the lead in the conference with surprising wins over USC and UCLA out of the gate. They struggled against the top teams in the conference, all with considerably more experience than the Huskies, who routinely started four freshmen, such as Utah and Oregon, for the rest of the season.
Four Huskies received All-Conference honors last week. Andrew Andrews, the league leader in scoring, was named First-Team All-Conference, Dejounte Murray was named to the second All-Conference team and the All-Freshman team. Marquese Chriss and Malik Dime were named as Honorable Mentions to the All-Freshman team and the All-Defensive team, respectively. Romar wanted Dime on the All-Defensive team, since his 82 blocked shots were second in the conference.
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The Huskies hope they can keep their season alive with a win over Stanford on the strength of their young talent tomorrow afternoon. Then they need a win over Oregon to continue, possibly into the National Championship. In the frenzy of the Pac-12 Tournament, anything could happen.