Huskies get 2nd chance vs. Cal

SEATTLE – Upon reflection, coach Lorenzo Romar still doesn’t find much positive about the basketball game his Washington Huskies played at California on Jan. 15.

That 82-56 loss in Berkeley wasn’t pretty then, and it doesn’t look much better in retrospect.

“No one got hurt,” Romar said Friday, a day ahead of UW’s rematch against the Golden Bears at Hec Edmundson Pavilion. “That would probably be it. It wasn’t a very positive night for the Huskies.”

But Romar accurately notes that this is “a different game, different time,” as Cal visits UW at noon today.

It will also be played in a different location, at Hec Ed, where the Huskies haven’t lost to a Pac-12 opponent this season and have mostly looked like an entirely different team than the one that almost always loses on the road.

So no, Romar said, he doesn’t think his players are affected in any particular psychological fashion by the 26-point whupping the Golden Bears (16-8, 7-4) applied at Haas Pavilion last month.

Just like Colorado didn’t seem all that shaken by a 17-point road loss to UW (14-11, 6-6). The Buffaloes won the rematch in Boulder last week by 26 points.

And Stanford, which defeated the Huskies by 12 in Palo Alto, lost a 64-60 decision at Hec Ed on Wednesday.

“We’ve been in positions like this on both ends, where we have beaten a team pretty convincingly and the next time it’s a different story, and vice versa,” Romar said. “So psychologically, every team takes it different.”