Sprinkle Tells How New Husky Claude Was Hard on Old Huskies

Danny Sprinkle remembers how painful it was for his University of Washington basketball team to face Desmond Claude last season, with the multi-purpose USC guard playing a leading role in sending the Huskies to 24- and 31-point defeats.

It was an obvious reason he and his staff went and convinced the 6-foot-6 swingman to come play for the Huskies after he had his way with them.

 “Desmond was one of the best guards we played all season last year,” Sprinkle said in a UW news release. “He completely dominated and controlled both of our games against USC."

That he did, first in early December, by scoring 20 points, grabbing 4 rebounds and 4 dishing out assists in an 85-61 victory at Alaska Airlines Arena -- the UW's worst home loss last season by a wide margin.

"Desmond Claude, he controlled the entire game without him being aggressive offensively. ... I thought he did a great job facilitating and getting everybody shots," Sprinkle said in the postgame of that outing.

Three months later, Claude was at it again, scoring 25 points and dropping a season-high 11 assists on Sprinkle's team whenn it came to the Galen Center in Los Angeles and got run out of the place by the Trojans in a 92-61 defeat -- the Huskies second-most lopsided setback of the season.

Claude, the UW's seventh player culled from the transfer portal, will follow former USC teammate Wesley Yates III, plus Rutgers' Lathan Sommerville, East Tennessee State's Quimari Peterson, Lipscomb's Jacob Ognacevic, Indiana's Bryson Tucker and Florida State's Christian Nitu.

Claude, who averaged 15.8 points per game that ranked him 12th in the Big Ten, is the third incoming transfer who led his team in scoring a year ago, along with Ognacevic, a 20-point scorer, and Peterson, who topped his team with a 19.5-point average.

"He is a veteran, experienced player and has been extremely effective and productive at the Big East and Big Ten levels," Sprinkle said of a player who began his career at Xavier. "We are expecting him to continue that production and have a great senior season.”

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