When Danny Sprinkle sat down for his postgame press conference following the Washington Huskies’ 87-69 victory over Eastern Washington, he wasn’t coy about the criticism he’s thrown in the direction of guard Mekhi Mason.
“I’m really proud of Mekhi because I’ve challenged him a lot the last month,” Sprinkle said. “I took him out of the starting lineup, got after him, and he’s coming out the other side of that now. I’m really proud of how he’s handled that adversity.”
The junior transfer from Rice responded as well as he possibly could against the Eagles, helping the Huskies break out of their shooting slump with a game-high 23 points. He went 7-11 from the field, including 5-7 from behind the three-point line in the best shooting performance from any Husky so far in the 2024-25 season.
With just three games remaining before the Huskies embark on their first journey in the Big Ten, Mason has come out of Sprinkle’s doghouse with high hopes for the rest of the season.
“Three-point shooting is one of the things we’ve been struggling with but we know we’re all great shooters,” Mason said. “This game proved it. If we can shoot 50 percent in this game…we all knew it was going to come, we’ve been saying all the time that we’re all great shooters and we just haven’t been hitting shots and this proved it. We’re going to stay in the gym and keep getting shots up like we always do and we’re going to have more performances like this.”
With the toughest part of their schedule yet to come, the Huskies are going to need to rely heavily on Mason to space the floor and give more one-on-one opportunities for forward Great Osobor in the paint. And according to his teammates, he has more performances like this in store in the near future.
“We all knew he had it in him and we’ve been saying he’s due for one,” guard Zoom Diallo said. “That was just a little sneak peek of what he can do, because he does it every day in practice.”