By Joel Flom
Arizona Daily Wildcat
February 6, 1998

Dickerson too hot to handle

The University of Arizona pep band last night showed off the newest addition of their musical repertoire, Chumbawumba's "Tubthumping."

Well in the second half, the Huskies got knocked down, never got up again, and Michael Dickerson made sure they stayed down.

Dickerson went a perfect 11 for 11 from the field in the second half, 3 for 3 from three-point land, as he overcame a slow start and lit up the Huskies for a game high 30 points in 27 minutes.

The way warm ups went, Dickerson figured he would not make much of an impact in the contest.

"Before the game I thought, 'Man, it will be a long night," Dickerson said about his pre-game shoot-around.

The senior small forward had trouble finding a rhythm in the first half, going just 2 for 5, with a three pointer, for five points.

"I figured that I would end with ten points," Dickerson said of the halftime evaluation of his game.

Ten points? Not even close. Try 11 straight buckets, eight of which were jumpers. Dickerson had went into a phone booth during halftime, and emerged with a hot hand that kryptonite could not cool.

"His hand had to be 250 degrees," Arizona head coach Lute Olson said.

"My teammates just started giving me the ball in the right spot," Dickerson said. "They came out looking for me more."

And they found Dickerson in the zone.

"I looked at (Mike) Bibby, and told him to keep giving (Dickerson) the ball," junior center A.J. Bramlett said.

After hitting a pair of threes and a jumper, Dickerson accounted for 18 of the Wildcats first 24 points at the beginning of the second half, drilling a variety of jumpers off the dribble and getting a few down low in the paint.

"I just came out hitting," Dickerson said. "A couple of them were luck."

The Seattle native finished the second half with 25 points in just 13 minutes before he put on his shooting shirt and watched the rest of Arizona's 112-81 thrashing of Washington from the sidelines.

"The only way to stop him was to get him out of there," Olson said.

On his last shot of the night, a jumper to give himself an even 30, Dickerson kissed his hand and pointed to the sky at midcourt as he back-pedaled to his defensive spot.

"Its a blessing," Dickerson said. "I just came out feeling good."

To his teammates, however, this was not an unexpected performance from the senior.

"That is vintage Mike D.," Bramlett said. "He has been waiting for that. Last year he got them in bunches."

"We have been seeing this since I got here," junior guard Jason Terry said. "He does that to us everyday in practice."