1998 Huskies: Flashback

[Dogbreath2U]

As I mention from time to time, watching old Husky games is the cornerstone of my continuing to exercise on my treadmill. I watched a few games from 1997 and it brought back Rip playing point guard on a team with a bunch of freshman. Watching some regular season and all of the postseason games on HuskyGames, it brought back forgotten memories.

One game that was awesome even in a loss was the game against Kansas that year. They had a team with Vaughn, LaFrentz, Pollard, and Pierce. UConn came out on fire, lost the lead, then hung in and gave them everything they could handle. Pierce was the difference in that game.

The thing that really struck me in that game was how good Jake Voskuhl was (and in the big games the rest of the season). While not a great shotblocker, he controlled the paint by using his strength and tenacity in boxing out and how on the offensive end he would set bone jarring picks. He pretty well neutralized LaFrentz and Pollard by himself. Jump forward to the game against Washington in the NCAAs where he was up against the very large Todd MacCulloch. Although quite a bit bigger than Jake, Voskuhl won the battle even though MacCulloch got points. He fought a great battle against the UNC bigs too even though he had some difficulty against Jamison at times. Jake played awesome positional defense and was so strong for his size.

The most amazing change from 1997 to 1998 was the addition of Khalid El Amin to the team. He was incredible to be able to play the way he did as a freshman. In the game against UNC, Rip and 2 others (who I can't recall....probably Freeman and _____?) were significantly affected by being sick. Rip made a valliant effort, but just did not have the strength and stamina to play close to his usual ability. KEA held the ship together and made some big shots ...ended with 24 points, I think. What a tough game that was. UNC had Jamison and Carter, among others and our guys kept coming back and could have taken the lead with 2 to 3 minutes to go, but just did not have the energy to see it through. Carter hit some shots that kept us at bay.

Another surprise was seeing how Monquencio Hardnett was a real contributor to that team and how big he played in a critical stretch in the UNC game.

Again, kudos to gampelcrazies (?) and tcf15 for the library!!!

 

[MexicoHusky]

Right in my wheel house as a fan. My last year at UCONN. Made it to Greensboro to see us beat Washington at the buzzer and lose to UNC. Freeman fainted as he walked off the court against Washington. I also made it to Tampa the next year.

The thing that always surprised me about Jake was how bad his stats were. It always seemed like he would get 4 or 5 big rebounds at the end of games. I would think, Jake must have 8 or 9 rebounds. I would check out the box score the next day and those 4 or 5 big rebounds in the last 5 minutes would be the only rebounds he got. Jake did not get pushed around. He was physically able to play big time college basketball on day 1 of hjs freshman year...or very close to day 1.

 

[boog204]

That Kansas game was amazing. That was the game that told me that we were going to be at least a final-four team w/ that nucleus. Rip was great running the point, Rash was a great shooter then (what happened?) and KFree and Jake were animals. Packer and Nantz were blown away by how quick and tenacious we were. Kansas was billed "the untouchables" at that point and we were up big early and the HCC was absolutely rocking. Kansas ended up coming back and beating us, but that game was one of my favorite losses ever.

On Jake, when he was good, he was fantastic. He played great positional defense, rebounded well, set fantastic picks, and was more athletic than you realized. The stupid "he never scored 20 in a game" narrative overlooked how great he was intangibly.