Noah Dickerson Returning to Washington

Jeff Goodman at ESPN was the first to report that rising senior PF Noah Dickerson will be returning to the University of Washington for his senior season. This ends what was more than just a brief flirtation with entering the NBA Draft. Almost exactly 2 months ago, Noah Dickerson declared that he would be entering the Draft but would not hire an agent to allow for the possibility of withdrawing which he has now done.

This isn’t the first time that Dickerson has made Husky fans sweat about his availability for the upcoming season. After the coaching change from Lorenzo Romar to Mike Hopkins, Dickerson strongly considered transferring to a school closer to his home of Atlanta, Georgia. But after taking a few visits he decided to come back for his junior season.

Dickerson made a huge leap in 3rd year at Washington (and 1st under Coach Hop) averaging 15.5 points and 8.4 rebounds per game while shooting 56.9% from the field and 78.6% from the free throw line, all career highs. He was rewarded with a spot on the 10 member all-conference 1st team at the end of the year after having been an honorable mention the previous season.

The odds of Dickerson remaining in the draft dropped after he wasn’t invited to the NBA Draft Combine. The combine hosted 70 players and there are 60 spots in the draft so the chances of getting drafted plummet without an invite.

With Noah’s return the Huskies are now bringing back their top-8 minutes getters from a year ago. They’re also adding in a few freshmen who will compete for minutes at center, point guard, and on the wing.

Stanford ended up as the only Pac-12 program to be stung on the deadline as Reid Travis shockingly decided to grad transfer rather than return to Palo Alto. Jaylen Hands and Kris Wilkes both came back to UCLA. Expect Washington to be ranked somewhere between 3rd and 6th in the Pac-12 preseason media poll, show up in the “Others Receiving Votes” category of the AP poll, and for there to be an expectation that the Huskies end their long NCAA tournament drought in 2019.

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