The Washington Huskies lost to UCLA last night. In men’s basketball. In Seattle.
Many years, this would be inconsequential. But this year, a home loss to UCLA is very bad, unless you are a team desperately trying to make a backdoor bid for an NIT berth. Washington, previously a three-seed in this website’s NIT Bracketology, woke up this morning out of the picture, with sources (I asked Joe, who does our bracketology) saying our model currently projects them as the fifth team out of the NIT.
Of course, there’s plenty of time for the Huskies to get back into things. They could tread water, catch some breaks with automatic bids, let USC fall apart while that butthead Andy Enfield updates his résumé, and sneak in. They could blow right past the NIT by doing something reckless, like beating Arizona on the road at the end of the regular season.
For now, though, Washington is licking its wounds heading into a treacherous three-game stretch in which they likely need to win two to keep from falling even further below NIT-Land.
Trying times in the Northwest.
