On Monday night, the Seattle University Redhawks triumphed over coach Danny Sprinkle and the Washington Huskies for the first time since 1978. The 79-70 win snapped a 19-game losing streak for Washington’s crosstown rival on a night where Sprinkle’s team came out extremely flat, shooting 1-8 from the field and found itself down 16-3 just seven minutes into the contest.
That deficit proved too large to overcome, as the Huskies trailed for the remainder of the game.
“For whatever reason we weren’t ready to play with the aggressiveness and the desperation that we have to play with,” Sprinkle said after the game. “We’re not good enough to come out like we did and play the way we did…We don’t shoot the ball well enough. We’re not good enough at the free-throw line and we’re not good enough defensively to not do the little things and scrap and fight like we did against Washington State.”
Shooting has been one of the biggest detractors from Sprinkle’s first season on Montlake, and those struggles were on full display against the Redhawks. After coming out the gate slow, the Huskies struggled to find the same rhythm they’ve had in their last two games from the field, shooting 42.1 percent from the floor, 69.6 percent from the free throw line, and just 25 percent from behind the three-point line.
The poor performance from the floor caused the Huskies to trail by as many as 20 early in the second half.
“It’s deflating when you can’t make an open shot,” Sprinkle said. “Great has got five guys guarding him and we got guys wide open all over the place and shots weren’t falling.”
The performance of Seattle U’s Matthew-Alexander Moncrieffe was the story of the night, as the former Oklahoma State and Georgia transfer put on a show with a career-high 23 points and 16 rebounds, and overshadowed the biggest positive Sprinkle can take away from the game, Great Osobor’s performance.
The Huskies were short on big men since forward Wilhelm Breidenbach missed the game after hitting his head following a nasty spill in the Apple Cup, but Osobor had one of his better performances of the season. With a very high usage rate, one of the transfer portal’s most sought-after players proved his value, posting 19 points and 10 rebounds, his third double-double of the season, 3 assists, and 2 blocks.
He established the physical brand of basketball he’s come to be known for and found his touch around the rim, going 7-9 from the field after struggling to convert layups early in the season. But he knows that his team still has a lot of work to do in his final season.
“When you’re not making shots, you still have to guard and we didn’t do that,” Osobor said. “They just kicked our butts.”
After some struggles from the floor in the last few weeks, Portland transfer Tyler Harris found his touch, finishing with a team-high 20 points, going 2-4 from behind the three-point line while chipping in 6 rebounds.
With just 2-11 NJIT, or the New Jersey Institute of Technology, standing between Washington and the brunt of their Big Ten schedule, Sprinkle had a message for his team.
“We have better players than we showed, but our competitiveness, that’s what pisses me off,” he said. “We better start competing.”