When the Washington Huskies take the floor against UC Davis on Tuesday night for their season opener, Danny Sprinkle doesn’t know which of his three point guards will be out there during crunch time yet for one reason.
“I haven’t seen them in game situations,” the head coach said during his Monday press conference. “After seven, eight, nine, or ten games, I’ll bet a better handle on that.”
He’s got an exciting rotation at the position between transfers Tyree Ihenacho and Luis Kortright, who is cleared to play in the opener after missing Washington’s exhibition win over Western Oregon due to a concussion and promising freshman Zoom Diallo.
The three are talented all-around players who possess the ability to get to the basket, defend at a high level, and distribute the ball. But in Sprinkle’s system, that’s just the tip of the iceberg for what he asks of his point guards.
“The one thing as a point guard, you can’t turn the ball over. You can’t be sloppy with the basketball,” he continued. “I’ve been very fortunate in my five years as a head coach, I’ve had a first-team all-league point guard every year. I think a lot of that is because our system is kind of built for that, it’s built to have a great point guard. I’ve had three different ones in five years that were first-team all-league.”
“Is it great recruiting? Yeah, it is. You have to get great point guards, but now we really have to develop one of these three, if not two of them, into being really, really good Big Ten point guards.”
So, what does Sprinkle want to see from his point guards? He’s got a long list.
“It’s not just scoring; it’s organizing the offense, it’s making sure Franck [Kepnang] knows what spot he’s in, it’s making sure the wings are running hard, it’s making sure we have tight huddles every dead ball offensively and defensively, it’s getting back and stopping the ball in transition defense every single time not 90 percent of the time, that’s what we need from our point guard spot.”