“Washington falls to UCLA 69-58 in Big Ten debut.”

UCLA has been a headache for West Coast teams lately. Tuesday night was no exception as the Bruins beat Washington 69-58 in Los Angeles.

Basketball in modern times is relatively simple. You have a pretty good squad if you can defend well, make threes and limit turnovers. UCLA, now 7-1, actually is.

Washington, now 6-2, is hoping to get there.

The Huskies defended well, holding UCLA to 41% shooting from the field, but were able to defeat the Bruins by 18 points with 12 total turnovers. In comparison, Washington scored 11 points on UCLA’s eight turnovers. The glaring difference was three-point shooting. UCLA looked far more comfortable from beyond the arc than the Huskies, finishing the game 8 of 21 (38%).

If you’ve watched any of UW’s previous seven games, you can probably imagine it was another ugly shooting night for the Dawgs. Washington finished the night going 3 of 16 from three-point range, about 19%.

The inability to hit threes can cause all sorts of problems. Scoring goals is much more difficult as it allows defenders to half-heartedly defend the three-point line and instead focus on stopping the attack. That’s not ideal for Washington, considering star striker Great Oobor primarily plays in the key position. The Utah State transfer will struggle in Big Ten play if the offense stops getting open.

Of course, it’s also up to Osobor to get better. The talented big plays a selfless style of basketball, but is also prone to unnecessary turnovers. UW paid for it against UCLA and will continue against Big Ten opponents unless a postponement occurs. The hurdle for Danny Sprinkle is figuring out which players can be consistent perimeter threats to open up the offense as a whole.

Once the three-point rating begins to decline, not only Oobor will thrive, but so will five-star rookie Zoom Diallo. The athletic striker often has to be content with jumpers from mid-range because there are no free attacking routes for him.

Overall, Washington appeared to be part of a rebuilding program but remained competitive against a UCLA team that was talented enough to win more convincingly.

As mentioned, Oobor had problems. In addition to eight turnovers, he scored 14 points on 4 of 11 shooting. In his defense, Tyler Harris was the only other Husky to score in double figures with 12 points and 11 rebounds. Diallo finished with eight points and seven boards.

Washington returns to action on Saturday, December 7th when it hosts USC.