The Washington Huskies gave their fans a glimmer of hope with a moral victory against Michigan earlier in the week. They did not make good on that hope in the follow-up game against the Wolverines’ in-state rivals. The Dawgs played Sparty even for the first five minutes of the contest, but a 10-0 run gave Michigan State all the cushion they needed to cruise to a relatively comfortable win at Hec-Ed on Saturday night.
The vision of how the offense should look was clear in the opening stretch. Zoom Diallo made his familiar probing drives to either find his own shot or get the defense off balance. Quimari Peterson made a three at 14:14 of the first half to put all five UW starters in the scoring column and give the Dawgs a 13-11 lead. From that point, the UW offense cooled off and the Huskies trailed 39-31 at halftime.
The second half did not look terribly different. Michigan State maintained a lead from about 8-12 points for most of the half, never getting closer than 5. Diallo and Hannes Steinbach were the most effective offensive weapons for the Dawgs, with 17 and 18 points respectively. Franck Kepnang chipped in with 13 efficient points on only 8 attempts from the field. The rest of the attack was dire, with nobody else scoring more than 5 points or shooting better than 2-6 from the field. The team’s familiar three point woes cropped up again, going only 3-19 from distance while Michigan State at least managed a respectable 6-19. The Huskies also uncharacteristically lost the offensive rebounding battle by 10- 13 for the Spartans and 3 for the Huskies.
Most UW fans felt pretty good after the competitive loss to Michigan, one of the top teams in the country. Jacog Ognacevic and Wesley Yates returned from injury to provide some needed support for Diallo and Steinbach. Although Michigan State is also an extremely tough team at #12 in the country, it’s safe to say that most fans expected a more competitive follow-up to Thursday’s defeat. The schedule does not get much easier with undefeated #8 Nebraska coming up mid-week in Lincoln.