Lorenzo Romar talks Cougs
COUGARS
FROM PULLMAN -- It's just about time to get on the road, but first, some quick notes from Washington coach Lorenzo Romar's conference call today. He addresses recruiting against WSU in the Northwest, Reggie Moore's transformation and WSU adjusting to life without Klay Thompson. Read on.
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Romar's such a great storyteller that his press conferences typically run pretty long, so we'll just filter out the WSU-related stuff and condense it for you. ... As we wrote about earlier this week, Romar said WSU's recruiting focus is entirely different under coach Ken Bone (a former assistant and close friend). He said the Cougars do a much better job of "hitting it hard" in the Seattle area, but that he's not concerned about that affecting UW's recruiting because there's enough talent in Washington to go around. "We’ll get our fair share of who we want, and they’ll get their fair share of who they want." ... Romar said the Cougars are still dangerous without Klay Thompson because they have enough different players who can score on any given night. He said WSU's offense is "different, but you can't help but be different without Klay Thompson." He said he thinks the system is similar, but that the scoring is more spread out and the offense runs through different players, citing Brock Motum as one of them. ... As for Reggie Moore, Romar said he thinks the WSU guard is "picking his spots" more this year in terms of scoring as he adjusts to playing more point guard instead of just guard. "He can still score 30 on you on any given night," Romar said. ... The UW coach thinks that one of the keys to WSU's win in Hec Ed last year was the Cougars' ability to "soft press" the Huskies on the way up the floor, "just enough to make us think." He said he thought Washington handled it much better in the game at the Pac-10 Tournament. But he said Ken Bone is a good enough coach that he'll always find some kind of advantage WSU has over its opponent, then exploit it as best it can. ... Romar said freshman point guard Tony Wroten (elbow, tailbone) should be fine to play on Sunday.
All for now. We'll be back if events merit.
Christian Caple can be reached at christianc@spokesman.com. Twitter: @ChristianCaple