SEATTLE — You’ll have to excuse Ryan Appleby and Tim Morris if they don’t get all mushy during their Hec Edmundson Pavilion finales today, but Washington’s two seniors have more to think about than saying farewell to the home fans.
Sure it will be a special day for Washington’s elder statesmen, but after winning three of their past four games, the Huskies suddenly find themselves back in NCAA Tournament discussions. The Huskies came into this week’s games alone in ninth place in the Pacific-10 Conference, but by the end of the weekend, depending on how things shake out, they could be alone in fifth place.
“That’s how the Pac-10’s been,” Morris said. “We’re just beating up on each other.”
The top three of UCLA, Stanford and Washington State seems to have separated themselves from the rest of the pack, but everyone else — well, besides Oregon State, of course — is still in battling for position, with one and a half games separating fourth place (USC) from eighth place (Washington and Oregon). So, again, don’t expect Appleby and Morris to get too caught up in the senior day festivities when the Huskies host Arizona State today.
“I haven’t really concentrated on that too much,” Appleby said. “We’re desperate for wins, so it’s more important to be focused on trying to win the game than it is on senior night.”
Conventional wisdom says that the Huskies could lock up an NCAA Tournament bid by winning their final four games, but that certainly won’t be an easy task with three road games looming after today’s home finale. A 3-1 finish would leave the Huskies at 9-9 in conference play, which would put them in a tenuous position heading into the Pac-10 Tournament. Anything worse than that would almost certainly require a win in the Pac-10 Tournament to get Washington back to the NCAA Tournament.
“I don’t really know how it works,” Morris said. “We’re just trying to win as many games as we can to give us a decent shot to get into the (NCAA) tournament. That’s still a goal of ours, but the only way we can do anything about it is to win some games. It’s right there. We can be in that mix and put a lot of pressure on the committee to let us in.”
Lorenzo Romar insists he hasn’t allowed himself to look ahead at the various postseason scenarios. Ever since the Huskies lost three straight home games to cap a four-game skid, he’s been too busy trying to help his team recover from what looked like a season-ruining stretch of games.
“You know what, if I was taking a lie detector test, it would say I haven’t really thought about it,” Romar said. “We’ve just been trying to dig ourselves out of a hole. … In my mind, because we dropped some at home, we got behind the eight ball. I just have not allowed myself to think that far. I really haven’t. … We haven’t talked a whole lot about big picture. It’s been too difficult to talk about big picture when we have dug ourselves in a hole like that.”
Following the three-game losing steak at home, the Huskies responded by beating then fifth-ranked UCLA and have won two of three since that victory. Washington now has to figure out a way to keep that momentum going in its final four games.
“This is the most consistent we’ve been all year,” Morris said. “We beat UCLA, we didn’t play so well against Oregon, we really brought it against Oregon State, we brought it against Arizona (Thursday) night. We just keep trying to bottle that intensity.”
Morris indicated that the UCLA win might have been a turning point for the Huskies, who now hope that it didn’t come too late in the season.
“I don’t know, maybe we felt challenged,” he said. “Especially against UCLA. I know I felt really embarrassed about our showing down there, and for them to even have a chance of doing that again, I didn’t want it to happen. I think the guys had that same feeling of not wanting a team to just dominate you. We kind of had our backs against the wall. That’s a weak excuse for not playing all year, but it is what it is.”
Washington has two streaks on the line today in addition to its postseason hopes. The Huskies have won 11 straight over the Sun Devils, and have also won 11 consecutive home finales.
Contact Herald Writer John Boyle at jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on University of Washington sports, check out the Huskies blog at heraldnet.com /huskiesblog
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
