Once-Stinky Dawgs Now Fresh

When we started seeing the deodorant commercial on TV, there was just one question.

Bob Bender?

The UCLA coach, sure. The UMass guy, you bet. Kelvin Sampson - hey, coaching commodities didn’t come any hotter at the time.

But why Bob Bender? Why the guy from the University of Washington, where basketball aspired to be an afterthought? Why would a coach need roll-on at Hec Ed, where there was never enough passion to occasion perspiration?

Or was this a case of a product endorsing its spokesman?

So it was. And now someone is actually in a lather over Husky basketball - a modest lather, anyway.

In the space of 12 days recently, the Dawgs drilled Washington State and sweated out close ones over Stanford, Cal and mighty Arizona. Tacked on to an earlier win over Oregon, it was UW’s first five-game Pac-10 winning streak in a decade.

Of course, the Huskies promptly lost two they probably should have won, to Arizona State and Oregon, before clinching the school’s first winning season since 1987 by beating Oregon State.

“I actually think some of our problem was getting that 14th win,” said Bender. “The win over Arizona put us close and we probably put some pressure on ourselves.

“Now that we finally have it, I can see some relief.”

It is the only relief in sight. Five of UW’s final seven games are on the road against the Pac-10 murderers row, starting Saturday afternoon in Pullman against the recuperating Cougars. The consensus is the Huskies need five more victories - four if you’re lowballing - to sufficiently impress NCAA Tournament selectors, who may have forgotten Washington even offered the sport. And the way the Huskies slogged through the Oregon series made Bender wonder whether proving their postseason worthiness made for more pressure than his team could handle.

Now, though, he’s less concerned.

“Because there’s just no way you can get away from it,” he said. “Either they’re going to have to answer questions about it or people will talk with them about it.

“What’s important for us to realize is that whatever happens, what we do will dictate what happens and nothing else. Going out and playing will probably be easier than all the talk about it.”

Yeah, you’ve got to dread all that NCAA talk.

Unlikely as that scenario is, this is an unlikely team. It has a great player in Mark Sanford, but he’s just a sophomore, one of those slip-through-the-crack recruits whose arrival probably accelerated Bender’s timetable by two years. It has capable, if unspectacular guards, a pair of 7-foot freshmen and atrocious numbers.

Get this: In Pac-10 play, the Huskies are spotting opponents four rebounds a game. As a team, they’re making just 43 percent of their fieldgoal attempts. They may lead the nation in ratio of wins-to-field-goal percentage.

“So it’s defense,” Bender noted. “Night in and night out, if your defense is there, you give yourself a chance to win.’

“When we’ve shot the ball, we’ve looked great. But we’ve also had to grind out a few when we weren’t shooting well and what we hang our hat on is defense.

“We’ve had some surprises. Some of our individuals are having great years. The big guys - I don’t know if we thought their impact has been as big as it’s been. And I knew we’d have good chemistry, but the maturity was a concern and for the most part we’ve played very mature.”

That is a surprise. Of Bender’s nine-man rotation, only guard Bryant Boston was in the program when the coach signed on in 1993. This is a team of transfers and scrounges and finds and foreign aid.

So obviously a heaping helping of credit needs to go to Bender himself.

In case you don’t recall, this was a program riven with racial tension when he arrived, a dreadfully dull product in an antique gym. The school had virtually blown off in-state recruiting when Marv Harshman was shoved into retirement. The arrogant ineptitude of Andy Russo undid everything Harshman had done, and the brusque paranoia of Lynn Nance was hardly the antidote. Looking back at where the Huskies have been, even the NIT looks like Eden.

Can one man make such a difference?

You thought maybe it was the bucket seats they put in upstairs at Hec Ed?

Desperate to share in the mania that grips other campuses come winter, Husky fans have responded. Bender’s team won nine times a year ago; attendance shot up 1,600 a game. The Dawgs have had two sellouts this season and nearly a third. The perceived indignity of being second-banana attractions to UW’s traditionally successful women’s team has been erased.

“This team expected to be better than 14 wins,” Bender said, “but you can’t underestimate what it took to get this far. Everything now is all new territory. Every game seems huge. Every game, the pressure’s on.”

Hey, sweat happens.

You can contact John Blanchette by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5509.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review