Huskies center Robert Upshaw is on historic shot-blocking pace

SEATTLE – Barring serious injury or other misfortune, Robert Upshaw will finish the 2014-15 basketball season as the most prolific shot-blocker in Washington Huskies single-season history.

And if the 7-foot third-year sophomore maintains his current pace, the existing record-holders will be distant runners-up.

Upshaw is already swatting shots at a historic pace by UW standards, tallying 33 blocks in the Huskies first seven games. That’s an average of 4.7 per game, and includes a game in which Upshaw fouled out after playing only eight minutes.

His block totals in UW’s other six games, in order: 7, 7, 8, 5, 2, 4.

So with 23 regular-season games left to play – many of those against better competition, granted – it seems a foregone conclusion that Upshaw, who transferred from Fresno State, will shatter the UW single-season record of 67, held by Chris Welp (1985-86) and David Dixon (2001-02).

And if you really want to get ahead of yourself, the Pac-12 single-season blocks record is 133, set just last season by former Arizona State center Jordan Bachynski (but you might want to revisit that number at, say, the season’s halfway point).

Despite his record pace, Upshaw expresses dissatisfaction with his early accomplishments.

“I expected to be a lot better,” he said last week, before UW’s 49-36 stomping of 13th-ranked San Diego State. “I feel like I’ve had a little drop-off between the Pacific game and the UTEP game, kind of getting out of position. Just like Coach (Lorenzo) Romar said, it’s just about being in the right spot, being in the right places, and I think I’ve made some mistakes. But I feel like I can get better and learn from them.”

That’s a frightening thought for future Huskies opponents. The Huskies are newly-ranked – 17th in both major polls – and have obviously embraced a team-wide defensive mentality that was absent pretty much all of last season.

But there is no player more important to that cause than Upshaw, who is just the third 7-footer to play for Romar at Washington and patrols the paint with a shot-thwarting presence not seen on Montlake since … well, maybe ever. Or at least not since blocked shots became an official statistic in 1976-77.

“Last year, we were so small, you get near the rim, we wouldn’t make you pay for it,” Romar said. “This year, we make you pay for it.”

Brad Jackson, the third-year assistant coach who works with the Huskies’ big men, recalls his playing days at Washington State in the early 1970s, and a pair of opponents who blocked shots with similar or greater frequency than Upshaw.

Their names: Bill Walton, who Jackson played against, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then Lew Alcindor), whose UCLA career preceded Jackson’s time at WSU.

“That’s, for me, the closest comparison,” Jackson said before a UW practice last week. “Playing against Walton, you get a sense of that. But I think it’s a real gift.”