The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night of the Seattle Redhawks

With the top team in the polls going down on Tuesday, you would be excused if you missed the strangest story of the night in college basketball. I don’t think too many Seattle University supporters will.

Their team got eviscerated by Washington, 123-76, in a game that included the Huskies jumping out to a 49-10 lead, Quincy Pondexter outscoring Seattle in the first half, and no deficit smaller than 39 points in the second. But it also included a stretch where the Redhawks had just four on the floor. Basketball Prospectus’ Kevin Pelton explains.

⇥⇥⇥Less than three minutes into the second half, veteran Pac-10 official Dick Cartmell called both Dollar and Romar to center court to deliver an impromptu lecture. Dollar wanted no part of Cartmell’s message, which according to Romar was that the refereeing crew would not ease up on the whistle no matter how many fouls were committed. Cartmell wasn’t exaggerating, and thus fans were treated to one of the longest halves of basketball you will ever see.⇥⇥⇥⇥⇥⇥Seattle U was called for consecutive ticky-tack fouls while Washington tried to inbound the basketball, followed by a third very legitimate call, and the Huskies were in the single bonus at the 17:11 mark. All told, the Redhawks ended up getting called for 29 fouls in the final 20 minutes of basketball. Washington, which is prone to fouling in the best of circumstances, was hardly an innocent victim in the sloppy second half, getting whistled 18 times itself. There were six held basketballs and an amazing eight players fouled out. Six of them were from Seattle U, leading to this indignity. Since the Redhawks saw reserve guard Drew Harris leave the team this week, they dressed just 10 players and had to finish the game’s final 1:32 with just four on the floor. (Possible defensive alignments: “The box (no one)” or the “2-2 zone.”)⇥⇥⇥

The numbers in the box score are startling.

There were a stunning 78 personal fouls called in this game. 45 were on Seattle. The Redhawks had more fouls than rebounds, and were one foul shy of twice as many fouls as made field goals. And Washington made 46 free throws in their 47-point win.

But perhaps the most mind-boggling bit of this night is the low point it represents for Seattle, which is in its first season of playing only Division I schools while reclassifying its once-moribund program. The Redhawks have actually been decent for much of the season, and their crushing of Oregon State was probably the season’s single strangest result to this point. It’s now possibly the second-strangest, with a Washington team that has struggled all year making an unlikely candidate to deliver this beatdown. (No, fellow transitive property junkies, those results don’t mean U-Dub would beat Oregon State by 97.)

Last night’s matchup is eventually going to turn into some kind of rivalry for the hearts of the hoop diehards in Seattle. But it’s clearly not competitive yet. It’s not even close.

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