Commentary: Tough Big Ten stretch shows challenge facing UW men’s coach Danny Sprinkle

SEATTLE — So just where exactly is this thing going?

Are these growing pains, or is time to grow wary?

Are these blowouts par for a program under construction, or is this a triple-bogey despite low expectations?

The Washington Huskies men’s basketball team held an eight-point lead over 17th-ranked Purdue at halftime Wednesday night. But if you blinked, sneezed or scrolled, you’d have looked up and saw Washington was suddenly down 14 to last year’s national runner-up.

It was reflective of a series of games against Big Ten titans that has left UW seeing stars. The 10-8 Huskies are now 1-6 in conference play – placing them 17th out of 18 teams in the standings – after losing their past three games by an average of 20.3 points.

The final on Wednesday was Purdue 69, Washington 58, with the Boilermakers outscoring the Dawgs by 19 points in the second half. UW made a quasi-push in the final minutes that closed the gap to eight but never posed a real threat.

Signs of promise? Sure. That first half for the Huskies on Wednesday resembled the way they played in the second half against Maryland, when Washington upset the Terrapins earlier in the month. But that might not be doing much for Washington fans that hoped a coaching change was going to beget something resembling success this season.

Danny Sprinkle’s jump into a power conference is, for the moment, looking like a plunge. The man who replaced Mike Hopkins this offseason has not yet jump-started the men’s basketball team. That’s more of an observation than it is a criticism, as building a program – particularly one that missed the postseason in each of the past five seasons – takes work. Two months into this season, though, the hype has been turned on mute.

Last Thursday, No. 16 Michigan State handed the Huskies a 34-point loss in East Lansing, which matched the largest margin of defeat for UW since 2002. Three days later, 24th-ranked Michigan beat the Huskies by 16 in Ann Arbor. Wednesday’s loss made it four straight for Washington, which also fell to No. 22 Illinois by four on Jan. 5.

So is this cause for alarm for a Husky fan base thirsting to get back to relevance? Eh, I wouldn’t quite say that.

First, UW’s conference schedule has been brutal thus far. Its past four losses have come against teams that are a combined 22-3 in the Big Ten. The Huskies also lost to UCLA, a skidding team that was in the Top 25 earlier in the season, and USC, which sits at 3-3 in the Big Ten and 11-6 overall.

Second, as mentioned earlier, the Huskies did beat Maryland, which was technically No. 26 in the country at the time but 12th in NET rankings, which is the better indicator for future NCAA tourney selections.

Third, for a minute there, it really looked like Washington could knock off Purdue (14-4, 6-1). The Boilermakers were the better team, but self-inflicted wounds – 17 turnovers, missed layups and bad shot selection – cost the Huskies any chance of getting the nation’s attention Wednesday.

“To beat the type of teams that are in the Big Ten, we can’t do that,” Huskies forward Great Osobor said.

But perhaps the primary reason to be optimistic is that the Huskies have the 12th-best recruiting class in the country coming in next season, according to 247Sports. That doesn’t mean all will be solved. It does, however, appear that Sprinkle is doing his part to move this program forward. He deserves grace to see that through, regardless of how the rest of this season goes.

It’s true that this is a different challenge for Sprinkle, who A) transformed Montana State from a middling Big Sky team into one that appeared in three straight NCAA tournaments, and B) led Utah State to a Mountain West championship in his first year as coach last season. Success in the lower ranks doesn’t necessarily foreshadow success in a power conference.

But unlike Hopkins, a longtime assistant, Sprinkle did prove himself at the helm of other programs. Let’s see how this plays out.

Wednesday, I asked Sprinkle if he saw the Huskies’ recent struggles as a rough season or simply a rebuilding program taking its lumps. It was a broad question that he kept specific.

“I’m just looking it as a loss right now,” he said. “Like I said, we did some things well enough to win, but we didn’t do it for 40 minutes. Same thing at Michigan. You can’t play 32 good minutes against these teams that are (Top 25) in the country. Any Big Ten team.”

There are still plenty of games left in the season for the Huskies to show they belong in this conference, even if an NCAA tournament bid is all but dust.

All we’ve learned is that Sprinkle isn’t a miracle worker. Doesn’t mean he isn’t the right man for the job.