It’s hard to overlook the fact that the Stanford Cardinal outscored the Washington Huskies 45-39 after being down 17 at halftime.
And once again, UW coach Lorenzo Romar identified defensive energy as the primary reason the Cardinal were able to chip away at their lead in the second half.
“It’s interesting, we didn’t have that energy as much in the second half and we turned the ball over 10 times also – it’s funny how that works,” said Romar.
Romar’s point about turnovers should also come with the caveat that the pace of the game picked up in the second half as well so the Huskies pretty much turned the ball over on a similar number of possessions.
That said, turnovers were arguably the most significant individual factor in the Washington Huskies win over the Stanford Cardinal at Hec Ed tonight; the Cardinal have handled the ball rather well while winning three of their last four games and the Huskies forced them to commit turnovers on a higher percentage of possessions than average.
However, for Romar, that doesn’t diminish the fact that the reason for the Huskies’ inferior second half on offense was due to their defense, no matter what else was going on.
“The other things are a by-product of the energy – the defensive energy and energy in general,” said Romar, when asked what else might have contributed to the win. “I think because you have that energy you just shoot the ball better, you’re just a little more crisp offensively, I think it all works together.”
Certainly that will defy what statistics might indicate to some extent, but watching the team play at home and on the road recently it’s really difficult not to cite defensive intensity as at least a problem when the Huskies don’t play particularly well.