The Huskies will win tonight
In preparation for tonight’s battle of the Husky Dogs, I bring you four reasons why there’s hope the correct Huskies will win:
1) UW plays better when they’re not expected to win.
Throughout the season, UW has been up and down. Often playing well, but just as often losing inexplicable games. Games where they clearly should have trounced the other team. For example, they lost twice against Washington State. Washington State went 4-14 this year earning them a solid last place finish in the Pac-10. UW also fell hard to a losing record Oregon team early in the Pac-10 conference. On the other hand, they beat Arizona on senior night, swept UCLA and beat the until last night national darlings, Gonzaga, way back on December 4th. Not to mention their stunning win over Dee Brown and the Illini this past weekend. No one expected them to be in the Sweet Sixteen and yet here they are.
That said, Washington is going into tonight’s game clearly the underdogs as Connecticut is expected by many to win it all this year. Vegas odds? At noon today it’s Connecticut, with a 6.5 point spread. [wiki] No one is expecting Washington to be in the Elite Eight. I think that’s good news.
2) No team is safe, no matter how hyped.
LSU brought down one of this season’s Titans last night. If Duke can go out in a flame of no-shot-making glory, JJ “High Scorer” Reddick only making 3-of-18, anything can happen. Sure UConn had battled Duke for #1 ranking all year, but what does that national ranking mean really? In this tournament? Nothing. No one picked George Mason to be playing Wichita State in the Sweet Sixteen, did they? Plus, Connecticut lost to the Orangemen in the Big East championship and they were pretty shaky in their tournament opener against ALBANY. They are clearly not invincible. UW can take them.
3) UW wins the mascot fight.
UW’s Huskies are cooler and more fierce looking then UConn’s. Seriously, while UConn’s dog looks friendly, almost pet-like, UW’s is more of a sled-dog, I can win the Iditarod specimen.
vs. 
Mascots aren’t supposed to be cuddly!
4) I have pre-jinxed UConn.
That’s right, about 5 years ago I visited Storrs and walked around UConn’s home basketball court. I touched their dog statue outside the gym and I have pictures to prove it (except I was too lazy to scan it in)! No one can recover from that! Okay, so they won in 2004, but I didn’t care who won between them and Georgia Tech. Today I care. Today I’m implementing my dog-statue touching jinx. It’s all very scientific, I assure you.
There you have it. All reasons to ignore the so-called experts and to believe UW can prevail. Tip-off is at 6:57 p.m. (PST). Watch it and I promise the officiating tonight will be better than pro-football’s.
Go Huskies!
Except there’s stuff like this to get sidetracked with. C’mon whatever happened to all the fictitious, made-up mascots? Sorry, I’m just resentful because my #3 seed alma mater got ousted in the first round.
“Watch it and I promise the officiating tonight will be better than pro-football’s.”
yeah. but maybe that isn’t saying much.
Josh,
You promised the officiating would be better than pro-football’s? I’m pretty sure they shot 47 ft’s to our 23. 4 of our starting 5 fouled out and Jamal Williams had 4 fouls. They had nobody with 4 fouls.
Brandon had a clear shot goaltended in the clutch minutes, which to me looked like a , and 1.
They throw a double T at Brandon for talking to Rudy Gay, which gives our star player 4 fouls and three of them coming within a minute of eachother. That’s ridiculous.
Now, I don’t want to be the whining team again, but man that loss hurt last night. It hurt real bad. We almost had it. We should of had it. A few key mistakes and as I mentioned above, a few guys wearing stripes did not make this win possible.
I guess that’s what you get when you’re UConn.
You promised Josh.
Otis: I did promise and by doing so I think I inadvertently jinxed the refs. To be fair, the whistles were bad all around. I mean a T on Calhoun for throwing the ball to the wrong ref? Sigh.
C RO,
Calhoun held onto the ball and threw the ball over the official who was asking for it. It was a game he was playing with the ref, which I think warrants a T.
After reading the papers this morning I am even more upset with the double T on Roy and Gay. Gay throws an elbow and Roy tells him to stop, then Gay says to back the__ off? Double T? I know Roy was in his face, but you have to know what you’re doing as an official and no way does that warrant putting an underdogs star player on the bench with 14 minutes left in the game.
I think you might have jinxed those silly refs. How did they make it to the sweet 16?
Still a great year for the Huskies despite last night. Just wish it could have gone on longer.
Yes, it was a great year. And I say, if you’re gonna lose, it’s better to lose in a heartbreaker than to be blown out and never compete.