Dots: Happy Anniversary!

If you are a basketball fan, you were undoubtedly shocked and enthralled with the developments of the weekend. Whether it was the poor showing of the PAC 12 (including the Buffalo first round upset of Arizona), the shocking collapse of Virginia as a 1 seed or the barn burner affairs that were games like Gonzaga / Ohio State and Michigan / Houston, it was all great.

Washington, as it turns out, is one of only four PAC 12 teams still playing games ... all of which are in the NIT. They join USC, Utah and Stanford as they last standing representatives from the so-called Conference of Champions following Oregon’s ouster from the same tourney yesterday.

These are bleak days for the PAC in basketball. That UW might emerge as a ray of light from what has been an otherwise dreadful conference season is an unexpected and welcome surprise, to say the least. Maybe the dream will continue when UW takes on St Mary’s tonight in round 2 of the NIT.

Let’s jump into some dots.

Basketball Dots

• Today is the one-year anniversary of the Mike Hopkins hire. Ryan Clark put out this interesting if not somewhat hyperbolic piece that, among other things, reveals some of the process that UW AD Jen Cohen went through in order to arrive at the decision to hire Hopkins.
• Here what coach Hop had to say at his pre-game presser:

• The Dawgs are getting some new visuals in their locker room to keep motivation levels high:

Football Dots

• Spring practices are just one week away!

• Gabey Lucas is a media maven! She was a guest on the Casey McClain show to discuss the future of the Huskies football program
• After a brief flirtation with the Seahawks, former UW star Austin Seferian-Jenkins signed a free agent deal with the Jacksonville Jaguars. The deal was 2 years for $10M. This is Jenkins’ third team in three years.

Non-Revenue Sports Dots

• The #1 Husky Softball team dropped their first game of the season to #13 Arizona State but answered that defeat with a dominating shutout victory over those same Sun Devils. The Huskies now sit at an impressive 29-1 record with conference play now underway.
• Huskies baseball got off to a great start with a pair of thrilling wins over Arizona that led to a sweep in the first conference series of the season. Sunday’s win was an extra inning affair that paired a great starting performance from sophomore Jordan Jones with a game-winning hit from freshman Noah Hsue.

The Larry Scott Dot

• We’ll have more on this as the week develops, but just how bad a shape is the PAC 12 in right now? Our SB Nation friends pondered the question and concluded that the level of crisis in the P12 lies somewhere between “Miley Cyrus as cultural icon” and “200 mile-wide asteroid hurtling straight towards the earth”

And, for those of you that attended Washington, don’t ever forget that the good days on campus were very good indeed.