Tag: Washington Huskies Basketball

The Washington Huskies have played just four games in the Danny Sprinkle era and still have a lot of kinks to work out, especially in the realm of shooting.

Great Osobor isn’t immune to those issues, as the star transfer from Utah State has shot 35.4 percent from the floor in the early days of his final season, but he’s been able to more than make up for his struggles from the field with dominance on the glass.

The 2023-24 Mountain West Player of the Year leads the NCAA in rebounds, averaging 13 per game so far this season, and has been an important factor on the boards at both ends of the floor in the absence of Franck Kepnang. His 4.25 offensive rebounds per game are tied for No. 15 in the nation and have helped him get plenty of opportunities at the free throw line.

His 47 attempts are tied for No. 5 in the nation, and if he can improve from there, as he’s shooting just 53 percent from the charity stripe, Osobor could see his stats balloon in the coming weeks.

In Washington’s 74-69 win over UMass Lowell, he managed an impressive 23 points and 18 rebounds, but Sprinkle doesn’t believe his senior leader is playing at a high level yet.

“He’s not, and he knows that, ” he said on Sunday. “I’m complaining about 23 and 18, but honestly, he should’ve had 35 and 25. And if you’re going to be the guy, you’ve got to be the guy. If he makes layups today, he has 35 points, or if he makes a couple free throws… but, I thought his effort was pretty good rebounding the basketball.”

Sprinkle said his star player is also out of shape as he continues to recover from an illness that kept him out of some offseason workouts, and for someone that’s also No. 2 in the nation in steals with 16, it only further poses the question: what will Osobor look like at his best? Because according to his head coach, he’s nowhere close to being there yet.

“He’s so much better than he’s played the first four games, it’s not even close.”

Portland transfer Tyler Harris has been a spark plug for the Washington Huskies since his first game on Montlake. In Danny Sprinkle’s first game at the helm, Harris hit the shot that gave his team the lead for good late in the second half and has been suffocating on the defensive end of the floor.

With DJ Davis away from the team, the 6-foot-8 Harris stepped in and earned his first start against the Nevada Wolfpack. He was one of two Huskies that scored in double figures, finishing with 10 points and adding 5 rebounds, 3 blocks, and a steal.

“He’s got to get better, and a lot of it is new to him from a defensive side and offensive side,” Sprinkle said of his first start. “He’s got to just play, he’s got to play harder, he’s got to play tougher, but then he’s got to be more aggressive, he’s got to get to the offensive glass, he’s got to impose his will on the game instead of letting the game hit him. Sometimes, when he drives, he’s got to be really aggressive because he is really talented when he gets the ball into the middle of the paint, and we need him to score the basketball.”

In the two games since Sprinkle said he wanted to see more from the sophomore, Harris has responded admirably. He’s posted double digits in each, scoring 13 points against Seattle Pacific and 12 against UMass Lowell, adding 12 rebounds, 9 blocks, and 4 steals across the two wins.

That included a team-high 38 minutes against UMass Lowell, and as he continues to grow in Sprinkle’s system, he could earn more starts as other members of Washington’s backcourt have struggled to shoot the ball at the start of the year,

The Washington Huskies are 3-1 through their first four games under coach Danny Sprinkle but still have plenty of room for improvement before the start of Big Ten play.

His top focus needs to be the Huskies’ field goal percentage. As a team, Washington has shot 40.16 percent from the field, which ranks No. 316 out of 355 Division I programs.

That includes a 27.03 percentage from three-point range, which places the Huskies at No. 319 in the nation. Their 57.8 percentage from the free-throw line is even worse, ranking No. 348.

After the Huskies secured a 74-69 victory over UMass Lowell on Sunday, Sprinkle acknowledged that he has faith in his team to improve from the field, but admitted that he’s running out of patience waiting for the very fixable issue to correct itself.

“I know we’re so much better which excites me because I know we’re not that bad,” he said on Sunday. “I see these guys all the time in practice finishing, knocking down free throws, I see us go through stretches where we’ll make five or six threes when we’re defending well in practice. I know it’s there and the problem is these guys know once you show me you can do it, my expectation and standard is you do it every time.”

Washington has put together one solid shooting half, when the Huskies were down 11 at halftime against Division II Seattle Pacific, and shot 54 percent from the field, including 50 percent from three-point range on their way to a 77-62 victory.

“My standard is not going anywhere,” Sprinkle continued. “We just have to continue building with this team and I expect us to break out, I really do, but my patience level? I’m never patient.”

The Washington Huskies added a surprise commitment from promising international prospect Dominique Diomande over the summer, but since then, he’s been an enigma.

The 6-foot-7, 190-pound wing who has played professionally in France for the last three years looks like a much-needed addition to coach Danny Sprinkle’s roster, which has started the season 2-1 without him but could use his slashing ability and strong defense.

Now, as he works to gain NCAA eligibility, it appears he has set a date for his arrival in Seattle.

“Before December,” he said in an interview with Pro Insight. “Before the start of Big Ten conference play. I’m so excited [to play for Washington], I just want to play basketball. The last game I played was against Monaco in May…I just want to play, see my teammates, see my coaches, see Seattle, and I just want to play.”

That would place his arrival on November 29 or 30, as the Huskies start Big Ten play on December 3 at UCLA. In the meantime, Diomande has split his time between the United States and France, where he’s worked out with some NBA stars of the past and present.

“I got a lot of experience and not just on basketball, but on the life side,” he said. “I got the chance to work out with great players like Anthony Edwards, Michael Beasley, and Andre Drummond, and I got a lot of experience from those workouts, especially in the invisible work like stretching and the way they eat.”

Listen to Diomande’s full interview with Pro Insight here.

Danny Sprinkle started his first full recruiting class with the Washington Huskies on a high note and made it official on Wednesday, signing four-star guards JJ Mandaquit and Courtland Muldrew to Big Ten Athletic Scholarship Agreements.

After the Huskies’ nerve-wracking 77-62 win over Seattle Pacific University, where Sprinkle’s team trailed by as many as 13 points in the first half, he took some time during his postgame press conference to discuss his two 2025 signees.

“They’re awesome, I can’t tell you how excited I am to have those guys,” Sprinkle said. “Those were the two guards that I saw this summer and said, ‘We have to get these two.'”

Here’s what he said about them.

JJ Mandaquit

“I’ve known him forever; I was at Utah State, so I’d seen him while I was in Utah, and he might be the truest point guard in the country. He’s an old school, throwback, tough, physical, pass-first, he can score it, makes all the right reads, I think he’s a two-time gold medalist on Team USA. You see some of the schools we beat out to get him, we beat out some of the elite of the elite, and we’re really happy. He’s one of those kids who’s just, he’s about the right stuff, he’s a winner, he’s a team kid, so we’re really fortunate to get him and are excited to get him in the program.”

Courtland Muldrew

“First off, Coach [Tony] Bland did a tremendous job with JJ as well as the rest of our staff, and Coach [Demarlo] Slocum had a family connection with Courtland. It’s not easy to get the kids out of the South to come all the way up to Seattle, and he had every SEC school, Big 12, and he could’ve picked where he wanted to go. I saw him at the Top 100 camp, and I thought he was terrific. Both of them have Big Ten bodies and will be able to come in and play right away. Like Jase [Butler] and Zoom [Diallo], they’ve got bodies for freshmen, and we’re going to have to do that with multiple guards that we recruit because it’s such a physical league, but Courtland can score it at all three levels and the thing that I love about both of them, and I go back to Nate Robinson talking to our team over the summer, those two are dogs.”

“There’s a competitive spirit to those two that Husky fans are used to seeing from some of our guards in the past, especially those 2008-2015 teams. These are competitive kids that have played at a high level, and they take it serious, and they’re going to come in from day one, and they’re not backing down from anybody. I don’t care if it’s a senior, junior, that’s the kind of steel that they’re made of, and we’ve got to continue to get more and more players like that because then all of a sudden, that’s when I love coaching practice because you get some competitive dudes out there and get those dogs, and that’s what I like.”

Sloppy. That’s the only way to describe the Washington Huskies’ first half against the Seattle Pacific Falcons, as the Division II team walked into Alaska Airlines Arena and took an 11-point lead into the locker room.

But, whatever Danny Sprinkle said to his team at halftime clearly resonated with his team, as the Huskies came out of the locker room and did exactly what they should to their inferior opponents. They opened the second half on a 12-2 run and cruised to a 77-62 victory after there was plenty of cause for concern early on.

“I thought our energy was off in the first half for whatever reason, we just didn’t have any juice,” coach Danny Sprinkle said after the game. “It wasn’t pretty at halftime, but credit to our guys, they’re the ones who had to go do it on the floor. We can yell and scream and do all that, but they have to go compete and play with energy to get deflections and win toughness plays and they did that. Hopefully, this is a lesson moving forward that we need to play with that second-half energy all 40 minutes.”

Senior DJ Davis responded to his coach’s passionate halftime message in a big way. After missing Washington’s 63-53 loss to Nevada, as he welcomed his newborn child with his wife, he bounced back from an 0-8 performance in the season opener against UC Davis.

The Butler transfer finished his night with 18 points, and all but 2 of those points came in the second half. He shot 6-9 from the floor, including 4-6 from behind the three-point line.

Freshman guard Jase Butler was another catalyst for the Huskies in the second half, as the one-time Illinois commit played strong defense as Sprinkle came out of the locker room and asked his team to play a full-court press, which put a lot of pressure on the Falcons.

Butler made an impressive block where he rose above everyone else on the court to deny a shot off the backboard before making a three-pointer on the other end. The lefty finished his day with 6 points, all coming in the second half.

Without center Franck Kepnang, who was in street clothes, a lot was asked of Great Osobor. The coveted transfer struggled from the floor, shooting 5-12, but was still able to muster 18 points after going 8-15 from the free throw line, adding 8 rebounds, 3 assists, a block, and 7 steals.

Osobor, like the rest of the Huskies, still has plenty to clean up, though, but showed the resilience necessary to get the victory.