Washington Basketball: Takeaways from dominant win over South Dakota

The No. 22 Huskies came into their matchup with South Dakota undefeated in Seattle and after Monday night, things stayed that way for Washington Basketball.

Washington Basketball was looking at this South Dakota matchup as a solid tune-up on their way to a showdown with No. 9 Gonzaga on December 8.

South Dakota is a great offensive team, coming into Monday’s game ranked as the best 3-point shooting team in the nation, hitting just over 47% of their shots from 3-point range. Because of the proficiency that South Dakota shows from deep and Washington’s commitment to head coach Mike Hopkin’s 2-3 zone, this had all the makings of a “trap game” for the Huskies.

But Hopkins had his squad prepared. Things were definitely closer than Washington basketball faithful would have liked to see, with the Huskies taking a single-digit lead into the half after a couple of baskets from the stellar freshman duo of Isaiah Stewart and Jaden McDaniels.

Both Stewart and McDaniels were McDonald’s All-Americans, and part of a recruiting class that was expected to help Washington finish as a top-3 team in their conference, as predicted by the Pac-12 hoops preseason poll. And so far, the duo looks like they could be starting to click.

They dominated to score 36 of Washington’s 75 points, and they did it with relative ease against a South Dakota squad that could not match them in speed or strength.

While a win over South Dakota isn’t impressive, a dominant win over South Dakota fits the narrative that Washington is a powerful team in this year’s Pac-12 that—a non-conference loss to Tennessee aside—looks like it could make some serious noise come March, but of course, we will have to see how they navigate conference play first.

But what can we gather about this year’s Washington basketball team from their drubbing of the South Dakota Coyotes? Here are our takeaways.