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Washington’s talented, but they need massive defensive improvements

c.j. wilcox

From Nov. 20th thru Dec. 1st, I’ll be on the road, hitting 21 games in 11 days. To follow along and read my stories from the road, click here.

NEW YORK -- At this point in the season, Washington still deserves the benefit of the doubt. They are playing with Desmond Simmons, whose knee injury has kept him out for a month, and Jernard Jarreau, who is done for the year with a torn ACL.

Those are Lorenzo Romar’s two best big men. Losing them makes a difference, that fact undeniable.

But even with Simmons and Jarreau healthy and on the court, the Huskies don’t look like a team capable of competing in the Pac-12 thanks to a defense that, at best, is atrocious. Entering Friday night’s 2K Sports Classic consolation game, U-Dub was 181st in the country in adjusted defensive efficiency. They haven’t allowed less than 1.00 points-per-possession (PPP) in their four games this season, and got lit up by Indiana for 102 points in just 76 possessions on Thursday night.

Then came Friday, when Boston College beat the Huskies 89-78 in a game that featured just 64 possessions.

On the weekend, Washington allowed a total of 191 points on 140 possession. Do the math, and that’s 1.364 PPP. I’m not Ken Pomeroy, but I can tell you that is not good. At all.

“We have to get better defensively. Much better,” head coach Lorenzo Romar said after the game. “Right now, we’re just having to many breakdowns.”

The biggest issue for the Huskies right now is dribble penetration. Their guards are not great on-ball defenders in the first place, and it certainly doesn’t help when they lose any semblance of a rim protector, but the bottom line is that Washington simply will not be able to compete with any tournament caliber team if they don’t find a way to get better on the defensive end of the floor.

“We’re still trying to learn this whole thing,” C.J. Wilcox said after scoring a career-high 30 points. “We’re playing a lot of new guys. They’re being thrown into the fire. We’re still trying to learn our rotations. If one guy misses a rotation, it throws everything off.”

“We tell our players all the time how important team defense,” Romar added. “Four guys can be out on the floor playing stellar man to man defense and one guy is out of position and it looks like you didn’t play it at all. I thought there were times when we were playing really good position defense and one guy blew. In the first half we were back in transition, but we weren’t as organized as we should have been and they got a few open shots that got them going.”

The good news is that Washington can score. They have a number of weapons on their perimeter and they are pretty effective when they get out in transition. But without a massive improvement on the defensive end of the floor, the Huskies are going to have a long season in a good Pac-12 conference.

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