Hoops: UW 84, Stanford 83

I went to the first home game of the Pac-10 season last night at Hec Edmundson Pavilion. Though it was the 15th game of the season and I've been watching since the beginning of November when they started, it was like the beginning of the real season last night. In all of the games before, even though the Huskies were doing well, there was an attitude that said, "Yeah, well, we're playing hard and all, but this isn't the real test yet."

Now it's the real testing time.

Stanford has a good team. They are much different than they were with the Lopez twins on the floor. I thought the best pre-game quote was Mitch Johnson's, "The biggest difference is that we're missing 14 feet in the middle." The Cardinal are a much faster team and they shoot very well from all over the floor (56% in the first half, 41% in the 2nd). There was no point in the game where they were behind by more than a couple of points and for a good portion of the game they were ahead.

It looked, again, like the Huskies poor performance at the foul line (22 of 34 (64%) by my count) was going to come back and haunt us (Stanford missed only two free throws that I remember), but we made them when we needed to. Jon Brockman, who has been shooting much better free throws this season (he was abysmal last year) seemed to go back to his old ways last night. He only hit 3 of 10. Whatever. We still came out with a win and are now 2-0 in Pac-10 play.

Saturday's afternoon game against Cal will be a tougher test. I can't wait..