The biggest star of the 2011 UW incoming class is Garfield Guard Tony Wroten. The talented guard was rated the 31st best high school player in the country by ESPN.com. Over the weekend I got to watch Wroten play at this year's Washington State High School Basketball Championships. His team, the Garfield Bulldogs, defeated the A.C. Davis Pirates 75 to 68 to win the 3rd place game for Boys 4A. During the game Wroten scored a double-double. However, neither the final score of the game nor Wroten's box score do a great job of describing how the game went. To best describe the game and Wroten's performance you have to examine each half individually.
During the first two quarter of the third place game, the A.C. Davis Pirates used their swarming D to frustrated the higher rated Garfield Bulldogs. Led by their own talented guard Jackson Marquis, the Pirates made me wonder what all the hype surrounding Tony Wroten was about. He looked like your stereotypical ball hogging 17 year old as he tried in vain to force shot after shot. Wroten's insistence on shooting while under pressure did allow him to get to the line several times. However, once there, he failed to capitalize from the charity stripe. He made somewhere around 50% of his free throws in the first half. He certainly didn't look like the 31st best high school player in the country. The blame for the poor first half shouldn't all be placed at Wroten's feet. His Garfield teammates didn't help the cause much either. None of them managed to step up and fill in for the struggling star. The A.C. Davis Pirates looked like the much better team as they pulled ahead by 12 at half time and appeared to be ready to run away with it.
The second half was much different. The Bulldogs came out of the locker room looking like a new team with Tony Wroten leading the charge. Wroten was able to take advantage of his size and talent and truly dominate the game. Using a combination of driving and jump shooting he scored with ease. When he didn't score, Wroten setup his teammates with good passes. In fact, in a few cases his passing was too good and caught his teammates off guard. Wroten complimented his impressive offensive game by grabbing rebounds like crazy and playing stifling D. He looked every bit like the player the Huskies are expecting to get and Garfield's team was able to erase away their half time deficit and replace it with a 7 point lead. If it hadn't been for the Pirates Cooper Cupp and the Bulldogs inability to consistently shoot free throws (~66% for the game) things might have gotten really out of hand.
After watching the two starkly different halves, I was left wondering, which Tony Wroten is going to show up at UW next year? If the first half Tony Wroten shows up I wont expect to see him play much. The Huskies don’t need a poor decision maker forcing shot after shot. They especially don’t need another guard incapable of hitting his free throws consistently. However, if the second half Tony shows up the Huskies will truly have something special. Wroten showed he can be a dynamic guard capable of doing everything. That is something any team can use.
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