On Monday night, a high-profile football game played out in downtown Seattle and had everyone’s attention.
All you had to do was go to the University of Washington basketball season opener against Colgate held across town at Alaska Airlines Arena to find this out.
Nobody was there.
A quick hand count, excluding cheerleaders, band members, media representatives and essential staffers, came up with a minuscule 548 fans spread throughout the pavilion — one of the smallest gatherings in modern times for a Husky hardwood engagement.
Here’s what everyone else in the city missed out on: Danny Sprinkle’s decidedly undersized UW lineup did more than enough to put down Colgate of the Patriot League, beating the Raiders 90-76 in a fairly straightforward game that began right around halftime of the Seattle Seahawks-Chicago Bears match-up.
While the home team didn’t survive at Lumen Field, the Huskies emerged victorious as they should in their campus setting some seven miles away against their Eastern visitors from Hamilton, New York.
To get things starated, Sprinkle went with a starting lineup of 6-foot-10 returnee Lathan Sommerville at center, 6-foot-5 Texas Tech transfer LeJuan Watts and 6-foot-10 returnee Nikola Dzepina at the forwards, and 5-foot-11 USF transfer Ryan Beasley and 6-foot-7 Gonzaga transfer Steele Venters at the guards.
Dzepina personally put this one away himself by scoring 17 of the Huskies’ first 23 points to open the second half and finishing with a game-high 27. Shooting 10 of 17 from the floor, the second-year Serbian forward used an assortment of short jumpers and inside spin moves to get to the basket in his splurge.
For the first 20 minutes, no more than five points separated the two sides, with Colgate easing out to its largest lead at 33-28 before trailing 43-38 at intermission.
Watts again was a big point man for the UW with 22, largely by hitting 14 of 16 from the foul line. He took just 6 shots from the field and made 3.
An encouraging sign was the UW’s Wesley Yates III, who has not been the same shooter since breaking his wrist nearly a year ago, hit 2 of 3 3-pointers in the opening half, including a 25-foot heave shortly before the buzzer, and finished 3 of 6 for the game while scoring 10 points.
Getting nearly everyone involved, Sprinkle liberally rotated 10 players, including Beasley, who missed the two exhibition games in concussion protocol.
Among those missing in action were 7-foot-1 Mady Traore, who dressed but has been slowed by knee issues, and Australian guard Tristan Devers, who has been sidelined by a foot injury.
The Huskies have a week off before they play another Monday night game with a couple of things to consider. The Seahawks go again next Sunday. The UW will host Mississippi Valley State, which was the worst team in the nation last season at 3-30.
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