It wouldn’t have been possible for the excitement of this week to match that of last week, when the Huskies played three games in three nights to start their season.
This week, though, had its share of fun too, and most importantly left the Huskies still unbeaten:
Yo Adrian, how rocky did you leave things at UW!?: The Huskies defeated San Jose State, 80-70, in a mostly uninspired effort on Friday night. Quincy Pondexter, though, played like a man on fire, and let us all in on some of the dirty laundry left over from when Spartan guard Adrian Oliver transferred away from UW.
Jinx whut?: Isaiah Thomas made the cover of Sports Illustrated. There were six regional covers, and I.T. and the Dawgs were the only west coast team represented, and the cover distributed (as far as I can tell) throughout all of the Pac-10 areas.
A great pleasure this week was buying my copy from a newsstand at Oakland airport, and thinking about all of the Cal fans who must be tickled to walk in and buy their issue of SI with Isaiah’s mug on the cover. Buy an 11″ x 14″ print of the cover here.
The underappreciated superstar: We did this piece about how Isaiah Thomas looks like a better ballplayer this season, despite having such a strong freshman campaign last year. Percy Allen also pointed to this marked improvement and wrote this piece for the Times.
Big Josh signs and T.J. waiting: Josh Smith signed his letter of intent to play ball at UCLA on Tuesday, after announcing his decision last week. Here’s our post, which many readers disagreed with, listing three good things about not getting Josh. And, just as news of one recruiting drama was being put to bed, Terrence Jones decided to wait until the spring period to sign, likely meaning many more months of speculating about where he’ll end up.
Pac-10 floundering: No school in the conference has played more than four games, and only four teams remain unbeaten. Without a quality win yet, and several very bad losses (cue up the Sacramento State fight song!), the Pac-10 is looking more and more to be fulfilling the “down year” label it received from mcuh of the national media.
Thanks for coming!
Now that the college basketball preseason is getting into full swing, we’re going to start summing up the past week in Husky basketball each Sunday*. And what better week to start than with such an eventful one? Here were the major stories in Husky Hoops from October 19th through October 25th.