Huskies primed to make their run in Pac-10 Conference
LOS ANGELES — They were the ones to hand Stanford its first loss of the season last year, the ones who won 13 out of 14 conference games to sprint from last place in the Pac-10 to the NCAA Tournament.
It’s a good time to be the Washington Huskies, and head coach Lorenzo Romar knows it.
“It would be disappointing not to take advantage of the table being set for us to make a move this year,” Romar said Thursday after his team was picked to finish second in the preseason media poll and was the only team aside from Arizona to receive first-place votes. “You don’t have that luxury that often as a coach to have an experienced group that’s battle-tested.”
The Huskies do have the rare advantage of returning all five starters from last season, and they lose just more than eight points of scoring per game on a team that averaged 82. And they also beat Arizona in all three matchups last season, prompting Wildcats head coach Lute Olson to tab the Huskies as the team to beat this year.
“When the best looks at someone else as being the one in the way of being the best, then you’ve got something going,” Romar said. “We have a team that has more upperclassmen and more experience. We hope that this will pay dividends for us.”
That 19-12 mark last year — one that included a first-round tournament loss to UAB — was a breakout for the Huskies, who hadn’t won more than 11 games in a season for the previous four years. But Romar, utilizing an undersized but athletic lineup, has Washington playing an up-tempo style of basketball that helped him win a national championship as an assistant coach at UCLA in 1995.
None of the Huskies’ starters is taller than 6-foot-8, but all five of them are capable of success on different parts of the floor, a trait not many teams in college basketball can boast.
“It’s something that is underestimated, when you have five guys that can all make plays from any position on the floor. It makes you a little more difficult to defend,” Romar said. “That’s how we won at UCLA. In ‘95, when we won the championship, we had a lot of guys with versatility.”
Of course, the most exciting player on the Husky roster is nowhere near 6-foot-8. Diminutive point guard Nate Robinson, generously tabbed by Washington as 5-foot-9, flirted with the NBA draft after his sophomore season only to return to Seattle this fall for at least one more year.
Robinson’s flair for the dramatic has the Huskies looking like one of the nation’s most exciting teams to watch.
“All the hype, it really doesn’t matter as long as you play hard,” Robinson said. “It means a lot to me and it means the world to my team for me to have a good season. Me having a good year is going to help my teammates have a great year.
“We’re going to bring it every game. We want everyone to know that we’re here and we want to win as many games (as we can) and we want to destroy every team.”
The Huskies do find themselves in the unfamiliar position of being a favorite this year, a title that adds plenty of pressure. But Romar said that he thinks his group of players, a loose, free-wheeling bunch, can overcome the added burden by relying on the struggles of the past as inspiration. If he’s right, then the Huskies could be at the forefront of a conference looking for a resurgence after a disappointing year.
“It doesn’t give us a free ticket to the NCAA Tournament, but it does show progress,” Romar said.