After the Washington Huskies lost 71-60 Sunday night at USC, the stat everybody will cite all week is that the Huskies have lost six of their last seven after starting 4-0 in Pac-12 play. The narrative is easy: After a hot start, Washington has since nosedived and struggled badly. The reality is a bit more complex.

With the exception of the win at California, basically every conference game Washington has played has been in doubt during the final four minutes, meaning a couple of breaks here and there can make an enormous difference in terms of wins and losses.

Early in the season, the Huskies got those bounces at Washington State and Stanford. They easily could have lost one or both of those two. Lately, with the exception of the Arizona State game, they haven’t gotten the same breaks. Take away Larry Drew II‘s game-winning shot at the buzzer, and change one possession against Arizona, and Washington could easily be 3-4 in the last seven games.

Based on the typical relationship between point differential and record, the Huskies were really a 3-1 team during their first four games. They’ve really been slightly better than a 2-5 team during the last seven.

When you add the two segments of the season together, however, they fit. 5-6 is about where the Huskies should be at this point of the season, given they’ve been outscored by four points aggregate in their 11 conference games. On average, that should translate into a 6-5 record on occasion but most often a 5-6 record. So Washington is what its record says it is.

Before the Washington Huskies take on UCLA this evening, we’re midway through the Pac-12 schedule, which seems like a good opportunity to take stock of where the Huskies are after the ups and downs of the first five weekends of conference play.

Washington is 5-4 and tied for fifth place in the Pac-12, which about reflects the way the team has played to date. The Huskies have outscored conference opponents by 0.02 points per possession, which is consistent with a record around 5-4. Colorado, the other team with a +0.02 differential, is 4-5 in the standings, but then we know that’s not their real record.

KenPom.com shows Washington playing the conference’s second most difficult schedule thus far. (Note that this, and all other conference rankings, does not include last night’s pair of games.) That seems a little odd given the Huskies still have two matchups left with UCLA and a trip to Arizona on the schedule, but they’re also finished with Cal and Stanford, the second-best travel pair of schools this year after Arizona and Arizona State. (Washington and Washington State rate as the easiest travel pair, ahead of Colorado/Utah, with whom the Huskies are also done.)

Offense

Washington sits fourth in the conference at 101.3 points per 100 possessions. Overall, this is a below-average offense by Lorenzo Romar stanards ranked ahead of just two UW teams in the last decade — 2007-08 and last season.

The presence of C.J. Wilcox and Scott Suggs means we tend to think of shooting as the Huskies’ strength, but the team is actually below average when it comes to effective field-goal percentage in conference play and marginally better than average from beyond the arc (33.8 percent, fifth). While Wilcox has kept up his end of the bargain, Suggs’ 36.8 percent three-point shooting is way down from the 45.0 percent he shot as a junior before his redshirt year.

Instead, Washington is better than the average Pac-12 offense largely because of a single factor, the most consistent one throughout the Romar era: Offensive rebounding. In Pac-12 play, they’re rebounding 36.9 percent of their own misses, miles ahead of No. 2 Arizona (33.9 percent).

If there’s one area the Huskies have struggled, it’s taking care of the basketball. They’re 10th in the conference in turnover rate, which is uncharacteristic of a team with a veteran backcourt. For all the grumbling about Tony Wroten‘s miscues, last year’s team was much better at taking care of the basketball. To find an equivalently turnover-prone UW squad, you have to go back to 2008-09, when Isaiah Thomas started at point guard as a freshman.

I think the issue is tied to the Huskies’ emphasis on feeding the post. For example, UW guards had three entry passes stolen by defenders fronting the post on Saturday against Arizona State. Scott Suggs also had a similar turnover when Aziz N’Diaye was rolling to the basket after the pick-and-roll, and two of N’Diaye’s four miscues came when he was in the post.

As appealing as the high-percentage looks N’Diaye post-ups can create may be, they come with a cost in terms of turnovers because he is not a good ballhandler. The post entries weren’t his fault — one was a pass to Kemp — but they still have to figure into the math on feeding the post. It needs to remain just one part of a balanced Husky offensive diet.

Defense

Until last weekend’s wildly different pair of games against the Arizona schools, the Washington offense had been highly consistent in Pac-12 play, netting between 0.97 and 1.05 points per trip every game. By contrast, the Husky defense has been wildly up and down, holding three opponents (Cal, Colorado and Arizona) below 0.85 points per possession while giving up more than 1.05 points per trip during four of the last five games.

Three-point defense regression didn’t really hit UW until Saturday, when the Huskies needed far and away their best offensive outing of the year to overcome the Sun Devils’ scorching 12-19 shooting from beyond the arc. But the defense still collapsed because of open looks in the paint and second chances.

The common denominator when the Washington defense breaks down is that N’Diaye gets pulled away from the basket, leaving it unprotected. This isn’t really anything that N’Diaye is doing wrong; teams are simply using the pick-and-roll to draw him to the perimeter or forcing him to step up in help defense. In basketball parlance, the Huskies have done a poor job of “helping the helper” — having another player step into the paint when N’Diaye is busy guarding the pick-and-roll or cutting off a drive to the basket.

That’s why I’m positive about Shawn Kemp, Jr. claiming the starting job at power forward. Part of the issue is that the other Washington players just aren’t big enough to pose a threat to most players in the paint. Desmond Simmons, the previous starter at power forward, isn’t really a shot blocker. Kemp gives the Huskies another rim protector when N’Diaye is outside the paint.

I was skeptical that the Kemp-N’Diaye combination was quick enough to play extended minutes together, but so far I’ve been proven wrong by the results in terms of plus-minus. The numbers from the last two games are stunning. Washington outscored the Arizona schools by a combined 19 points with both big men on the floor, but was -21 with just N’Diaye.

This came despite the fact that Arizona State’s Jonathan Gilling is one of the worst possible matchups for Kemp, who wasn’t able to protect the rim because he was glued to the sharpshooter. Gilling got his points beyond the arc, but the Huskies made him pay with Kemp’s post-up ability at the other end, turning the mismatch into a net positive.

Looking Ahead

To enter the Pac-12 Tournament with a legitimate shot at an at-large bid, Washington probably needs to finish 11-7 in conference play, meaning a 6-3 record over the second half. That’s doable, but it will require the Huskies to find a win on the road against either the L.A. or Arizona schools and win out at home, beating both Oregon and UCLA. And there certainly can’t be any missteps like a loss to Utah that isn’t looking much better a few weeks in the rear-view mirror.

Optimists can point to the growth of underclassmen Andrews and Kemp as reason for hope. Both are significantly better than they were even at the start of conference play (in Kemp’s case, partly because he was coming back from injury). Gaddy seems to have turned back the confidence issues that had him in a shooting slump a few weeks ago, but Andrews has still earned the right to play down the stretch like he did in both games over the weekends. The scoring punch he — and, to a lesser extent, Kemp — provides has made Washington somewhat less dependent on Wilcox’s production.

Pessimists can note this team is still one injury away from being reduced to a six-player rotation and becoming a significantly worse team, which could quickly derail any tournament talk.

We’ll know which group wins out in a little more than four weeks.

If there was a bright spot to Saturday’s 74-65 home loss by the Washington Huskies to the last-place Utah Utes — and that requires not just a glass-half-full disposition, but a glass-overflowing one — it was the performance of redshirt freshman guard Andrew Andrews, who scored a team-high 17 points. Down the stretch, it was Andrews, not senior starter Abdul Gaddy, who ran the point for the Huskies. That change ought to become permanent.

Thanks to StatSheet.com’s plus-minus data and Lorenzo Romar‘s tight perimeter rotation, we can see how Washington has played with each combination of its four guards on the court during the first five games of Pac-12 play.

Andrews-Wilcox-Suggs: +17.4 points per 40 minutes
Gaddy-Wilcox-Suggs: +8.4
Gaddy-Andrews-Wilcox: -0.9
Gaddy-Andrews-Suggs: -6.9

Besides indicating that C.J. Wilcox simply can’t afford to rest for more than brief stretches, the plus-minus data also suggests that Andrews has been the superior option to Gaddy at the point. Yet Gaddy has played more than two-thirds of the minutes where the two players haven’t been on the court together.

If you’re not convinced by five games of noisy plus-minus data, I can’t blame you, but in this case their conclusion is backed up both by the eye test and individual statistics. Gaddy’s shooting slump is so far in his head that he’s not just missing, but missing badly. Gaddy is shooting 22.2 percent on threes and 27.0 percent on twos in Pac-12 play. Opponents have taken notice and are sagging off him, gumming up the rest of the Washington offense and making life more difficult for Wilcox and Scott Suggs on the wings and Aziz N’Diaye in the post.

At the same time Gaddy is dealing with a crisis of confidence, Andrews is seeing his grow each game. He’s made 57.9 percent of his twos and 38.5 percent of his threes against conference opponents, providing the Huskies needed scoring. While Andrews is much more prone to turnovers than Gaddy, his decision-making is showing signs of improving. After committing seven turnovers in his first three conference games, Andrews had just two combined against Colorado and Utah this week.

I understand if Romar is reluctant to publicly embarrass his senior leader by benching him for a freshman. Gaddy has been a great teammate throughout a career that hasn’t gone quite the way either he or Washington fans envisioned, and his defensive effort against bigger Spencer Dinwiddie was a major factor in the win over the Buffaloes. So it makes sense to keep Gaddy in the starting lineup to preserve his remaining self-assurance. What I’ll be watching instead is the ratio of Gaddy’s minutes to Andrews’ playing time. That should be close to even going forward, if not tilting toward the freshman’s direction.

Andrews has demonstrated throughout his redshirt freshman season that he’s a key part of the future of this program. Now it looks like that future might be here already.

With just less than two minutes remaining in last night’s 64-54 Washington win over visiting Colorado, Buffaloes forward Andre Roberson banked in a three-pointer. Unless you happen to be an NBA scout taking note of Roberson’s range, you probably didn’t pay the shot much attention. With Colorado down 11 at the time, it mostly served to prolong the final two minutes by encouraging Tad Boyle to foul and Lorenzo Romar to take timeouts to protect the lead.

What made Roberson’s triple notable was that it was the Buffaloes’ only three-pointer of the night in 10 attempts. In a game where points were at a premium, the Huskies’ 18-3 advantage from long distance was a major key to the win. Consider it an off night for Colorado, which usually makes 35.7 percent of its three-point tries, but part of a larger trend for UW.

The difference between Washington’s 4-0 start to conference play and their underwhelming 8-5 non-conference mark — which included home losses to Albany and Nevada — has been largely at the defensive end of the floor. The turnaround really dates to the Huskies’ final game before Pac-12 play, a 61-53 loss at Connecticut that was attributable to an off shooting night from star C.J. Wilcox, not the defense. Before that game, UW was allowing opponents to score more points per 100 possessions than their adjusted season-long marks (via KenPom.com). In plain English, the Huskies were worse than the average NCAA defense through their first 12 games. That’s bad news for a power-conference team, and explains the upsets Washington suffered.

Starting in Storrs, the Huskies have been a juggernaut defensively. Their last five opponents have collectively averaged 17.0 points per 100 possessions fewer than their season-long adjusted marks. Only one team in the country (Louisville) has been so stingy over the course of the season. There are multiple explanations for the turnaround. A healthy roster has allowed Romar to trim his rotation. A week of practice during the holidays may have given the coaching staff more time to focus on defense after spending early practice time implementing a new high-post offense. And Aziz N’Diaye has been dominant in the paint, successfully avoiding foul trouble to stay on the court for more than 30 minutes a night in conference play.

Beyond that, Washington has been extraordinarily fortunate in terms of opponents’ three-point shooting. Over the past five games, Husky opponents have shot 12-of-67 (17.9 percent) from downtown. While there have been some middling three-point opponents in the group, weighted for their attempts in each game, this group should have shot 32.8 percent. Colorado and Connecticut both would have scored nine more points had they merely reached their season average in those respective games. The impact was even greater in the Stanford and WSU games. Both teams made two fewer threes than expected, which could have swung close games.

Now, you’re probably protesting that improved three-point defense reflects everything else Washington has tightened up. Unfortunately, that doesn’t square with the research done by Ken Pomeroy, who has found that teams have little control over the three-point percentage their opponents shoot over the course of full seasons, let alone five-game stretches. You know who’s an example of this? The Huskies. When I took a look at the team in December, I noted that one reason Washington’s defense was playing so poorly was bad luck in terms of opponent three-point shooting. Through Dec. 22, Husky opponents should have shot 34.0 percent from beyond the arc. They actually hit 37.5 percent, though it’s hard to find an example of hot shooting actually causing Washington to lose (the two best examples were Seton Hall, which the Huskies won anyway, and a blowout loss to Colorado State).

Using the same method of expected three-point percentage, we can construct ratings for each of Washington’s games independent of three-point defense and summarize the two portions of the season (note that Pac-12 includes the UConn game, as before):

Stretch   DRtg   OppORtg  AdjDRtg   3P%luck  No3DRtg  No3AdjDrtg
----------------------------------------------------------------
NonC     101.6    101.0    - 0.6      - 8      98.6      +2.2
Pac12     88.0    105.1    +17.0      +10      97.2      +8.1
Total     97.7    102.2    + 4.5      + 2      98.2      +3.9

That’s a lot of column headers, so let me explain. DRtg is the actual points per 100 possessions opponents have scored in each stretch. OppORtg is the opponents’ season-long Adjusted Offensive Efficiency — what we’d expect them to do against an average opponent. So AdjDRtg is the difference — how much better the Huskies are than average.

3P%luck is the number of threes better or worse teams have done than expected. No3DRtg is how many points per 100 possessions teams would have scored had they made threes at their season-long percentage against the Huskies, and No3AdjDRtg uses this figure to see how the rest of the Washington defense compares to NCAA average.

Even if you don’t believe Pomeroy’s research, it’s clear that taking out three-pointers produces a more consistent view of defenses. More than 20 percent of the variance in UW’s adjusted defense from game to game can be explained solely by opponents’ three-point shooting. Factoring in the variability in three-point defense, the Huskies were above average all along, though they have gotten better over the last five games at other facets of defense.

The three-independent figure would put Washington about 50th in the nation defensively, which is similar to where the Huskies have been the last two seasons. Add in an offense that has improved slightly from 2011-12 and this Washington team now looks capable of ranking in the upper third of the Pac-12 and challenging for an NCAA tournament berth. That’s as big a turnaround as the three-point defense has made.

AN ASIDE ON LUCK: I know using the term “luck” bothers some readers because of the fact that it doesn’t take into account the skill, strategy and execution involved on the court. I would compare the issue to forms of gambling that include both skill and luck, like blackjack and poker. Over the course of a single hand, or even a night of play, randomness is the dominant factor, which is why we say poker players get lucky or unlucky. It’s only in the long run, over thousands of hands, that the randomness evens out and we can tell stronger players from weaker ones. Three-point defense is similar, except that the college season doesn’t provide thousands of attempts. There’s not enough time for the differences between teams to become evident. So three-point defense is in fact a skill; it just can’t be determined from opponents’ three-point percentage, which tends to be misleading.

There’s good news as the University of Washington Huskies prepare to take on crosstown rival Seattle University in their annual matchup tonight as the visitors at KeyArena. The game against Seattle U marks the first of four games against sub-200 competition that is far and away the easiest stretch of the Huskies’ schedule. Per Ken Pomeroy’s rankings, all four teams rate substantially worse than the weakest foe Washington has played to date (No. 158 Nevada).

The bad news is the damage has already been done. Saturday’s loss to the Wolfpack dropped the Huskies to 4-4, which already ties the most non-conference losses in the months of November and December in Lorenzo Romar‘s decade at his alma mater–with a trip to Connecticut still looming before the start of Pac-12 play. Three of those four defeats have come at home, where Washington was previously virtually unbeatable against non-BCS foes. Between Romar’s first rebuilding season and last year’s upset by tournament-bound South Dakota State, the Huskies suffered just one home loss to a team outside the major conferences: Gonzaga, in 2004, when the Zags were a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament and hardly comparable.

The situation isn’t quite as dire as those statistics might suggest. Pomeroy still rates Washington as one of the top 100 schools in the country (No. 96) and other rankings are more charitable. Sports-Reference.com’s Simple Rating System puts the Huskies 81st, while Jeff Sagarin’s method settles on 87th. Still, Washington is 99th in RPI, and an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament would already be difficult. The Huskies have work to do just to get back to the NIT.

During this rebuilding year, three factors in particular have hurt Washington. Let’s tackle them in ascending order.

1. Lack of a Go-To Scorer

The Huskies have plenty of valuable pieces on the roster. They just don’t quite fit together because they are supposed to complement a featured scorer–Terrence Ross–who is already in the NBA. When Ross committed to Washington while his teammate at Jefferson High School, Terrence Jones, de-committed, the theory went that Ross would ultimately be more valuable because he would stay around while Jones was headed to the league after a year. Instead, both players left after their sophomore seasons and Ross was drafted higher (No. 8) than Jones (No. 18).

Ross developed so quickly that it wasn’t until the Huskies’ NIT run that it became clear his stock was so high he had to declare for the draft. With Ross, Washington would have ideal complementary pieces in outside shooters C.J. Wilcox and Scott Suggs with rebounders and defenders Aziz N’Diaye and Desmond Simmons and a senior point guard (Abdul Gaddy) running the show.

Instead, Wilcox has been asked to serve as the Huskies’ featured scorer with impressive but mixed results. He ranks second in the Pac-12 in scoring at 19.9 points per game without any loss of efficiency. Looking at Wilcox’s overall numbers, however, masks the inconsistency that is inevitable given his perimeter-oriented game. While Wilcox averages similar points per game in wins and losses, he takes more shots in losses. His True Shooting Percentage has been an incredible .650 in wins and a more average .556 in losses.

2. Perimeter Defense

Of course, Washington’s offense hasn’t really been the issue. The Huskies rank 60th in adjusted offensive efficiency–precisely the same as last year. The true culprit is the defensive end of the floor, where Washington ranks 175th, far and away the worst mark of the Romar era–including his first season. So it’s hard to pin this on the system. Part of the issue is nothing more than luck; opponents have made 37.3 percent of their threes against the Huskies this season, and Pomeroy’s research has shown that opponent three-point shooting is essentially nothing more than statistical noise over the course of a full year, let alone eight games.

Other issues figure to be more lasting. Washington isn’t forcing turnovers–they’re doing so at the worst rate in the Romar era–and has been one of the nation’s worst teams on the defensive glass (among major-conference teams, only UConn has been weaker). While that points a finger at the rebounding contributions from perimeter players, everything is connected to a larger issue. The Huskies keep allowing dribble penetration out of isolation plays and pick-and-rolls, which gets the team into scramble mode–running out wildly at open shooters, leading to either an extra pass for a score or a second chance.

Gaddy’s lateral quickness, lost when he tore his ACL as a sophomore, isn’t coming back. Nor is N’Diaye going to get any more mobile against the pick-and-roll. The only solution here may be a heavy dose of zone defense that keeps N’Diaye anchored in the paint and perimeter players in front of their men.

The other personnel issue that has hurt Washington defensively remains the team’s single biggest issue:

3. Depth

The Huskies have played three games this season with a full perimeter rotation: a 22-point home win over a decent Loyola (Md.) team, a neutral-site win in overtime over a Big East team (Seton Hall) and an 11-point neutral-site loss to one of the nation’s top 10 teams (Ohio State). Rated strictly based on those three games, the Huskies would be a top-15 team by Sagarin’s ratings. Let that sink in.

That should give a sense of how bad the team has been in the other five games. Washington’s rating in them would place 211th, right between NC Asheville and James Madison. According to Sagarin, within this tiny sample size, the Huskies are more than 18 points worse when one of their perimeter players (either Suggs or Andrew Andrews) has been injured. The impact on their Offensive Rating, per Pomeroy, is 15.6 points per 100 possessions.

The team’s fourth guard–sophomore Hikeem Stewart–hasn’t shown he belongs on the court. Finding his usage rate this season (7.5 percent of the team’s plays and just 4.2 percent of shots, via Kenpom.com) requires a microscope, and Stewart is undersized defensively. (He does deserve huge credit for coming up with the deflection that helped UW beat Cal State Fullerton last week.) Romar has also tried walk-on Quinn Sterling, who has provided energy but also looks overmatched by the speed of the D-I game.

StatSheet.com has Stewart with a -24 plus-minus this season, including a costly -13 stint in the loss to Albany. Sterling is a -3, and in the rest of the Nevada game the Huskies played the Wolfpack even. In the five games where Washington has been short-handed, they are -22 with either Stewart or Sterling on the floor and +7 otherwise. Of course, the impact of depth goes beyond just expanding the rotation. The remaining perimeter players, especially Gaddy and Wilcox, have been forced to play heavy minutes thus far, leaving them less energetic on defense.

Returning to the good news/bad news breakdown from the lede, there are two ways to view this information. When and if Andrews comes back from a sprained ankle and the Huskies get back to full strength for the first time all season (Shawn Kemp, Jr. also missed the first seven games before returning, though his absence was less costly), there’s reason to believe the team might be decent if not good. However, this issue will not go away all season. Washington will always be one misstep away from trouble on the perimeter, and Romar can’t trade an extra big man to add perimeter depth. So whether the rest of this season will match the start will depend largely on injury luck.