Wins worth the wait
SEATTLE – Brandon Roy was contemplating jumping from high school to the NBA in the spring of 2002 when his father, Tony, started discussing the merits of playing for his hometown University of Washington instead.
It was a tough case to make. Washington coach Bob Bender had just been fired after his third consecutive losing season. And unknown entity Lorenzo Romar was on his way in from Saint Louis to try to resuscitate the Huskies.
“He told me, ‘Duke had to start somewhere. Why not help Washington?’ ” Roy recalled his father saying.
Washington doesn’t need help any more.
Just three years after Roy took his father’s suggestion to heart, the senior and his Huskies are entering the elite national level. Roy said Washington was “disrespected” last month when it was unranked in the preseason. Now the Huskies (8-0) are ranked 11th and off to their best start in 30 years.
This comes one season after they finished 29-6, won their first Pac-10 Conference tournament championship and became a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament for the first time.
They lost three starters from that team – including the often astounding Nate Robinson – yet are ranked higher than they were entering last March’s postseason.
“It is mind-boggling,” said Roy, Robinson’s successor as team leader. “To actually see all the hard work that you have done pay off, to see the program where it is today, it’s incredible.”
The pressing, run-and-gun Huskies lead the nation with a 96.4 points-per-game scoring average. Their 81-71 win last Saturday over New Mexico in the Wooden Classic was their lowest scoring output of the season.
It was also closer than usual. They have won by an national-best average of 26.5 points, even though they start two freshmen: point guard Justin Dentmon and forward Jon Brockman.
Washington has done this without playing a true road game away from Hec Edmundson Pavilion, where it owns the nation’s longest home winning streak of 29 games. The only one of its 11 non-conference games outside Seattle was on a neutral court in Anaheim, Calif.
Romar isn’t as surprised about his team as the rest of the country may be.
“Not being arrogant at all, but being realistic, I’d be more surprised if we lost two or three,” Romar said.
As senior forward Bobby Jones said: “We feel we can’t lose at home.”
Especially while playing only one ranked team outside of the Pac-10 – No. 10 Gonzaga. Washington beat the Zags in a 99-95 thriller Dec. 4. The rest of the non-conference lineup has included or will include not-so-mighty Morgan State, American, Idaho, Eastern Washington and Cornell.
But Romar isn’t about to say “sorry” for a schedule that has helped him develop Dentmon, Brockman and freshman post man Artem Wallace. It has also allowed the discovery of an inside scoring force in Jamaal Williams (averaging 14.9 points per game, second to Roy’s 16.1), a 3-point shooting whiz in sophomore transfer Ryan Appleby (45 percent from long range) and an unexpected scoring and rebounding boost in reserve Hans Gasser.
The Huskies have nine players averaging at least 14 minutes per game.
“I mean, Syracuse does it every year,” Romar said of the cozy early schedule. “It is not uncommon for major teams of the high-powered conferences to play many games at home. It’s just new for us.”
Yet Romar knows the nation may be generously assessing his still-developing Huskies.
“Maybe it gives you an unrealistic feel for where you are at this point,” he said.
That feel may soon get even smoother.
Lehigh (5-6) visits Friday. That is when the Huskies are expecting senior forward Mike Jensen to play for the first time this season.
The three-year starter has been out since September surgery on a dislocated left shoulder.
The conference tests begin Dec. 29 at home against Arizona State, which lost at home to Utah Valley State last weekend. No. 24 Arizona comes to Seattle Dec. 31.