Husky men have four big Dawgs

SEATTLE — Upon arrival as an eighth-grader at a private school in Georgia, Washington Huskies freshman forward Noah Dickerson looked at his schedule and wanted it changed.

Dance class? Uh, no.

He was the last student in his class to select his courses that year, so all of the popular electives were taken, and that’s what the school stuck him with. Dickerson tried to change it, but to no avail, and he had no choice but to attend.

And what do you know: “I actually started to like it. At first it was for football, but it translated to basketball. My teacher was an Atlanta Hawks cheerleader. That didn’t make it as bad.”

Dickerson quit football as a ninth-grader, but took dance for another two years — ballet, jazz, tap, salsa — and credits those lessons for his nimble footwork as a 6-foot-8, 235-pound post player.

Foul trouble limited him to 21 minutes in UW’s season-opening victory last week against Texas in Shanghai — the collegiate debut for Dickerson and six of his teammates — though Dickerson still finished with nine points and six rebounds. And he made one move — a step-through layup and foul — that Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar so admired that he recounted it in detail during Tuesday’s press conference.

But the more encouraging development for the Huskies, who host Mount St. Mary’s on Thursday (7:30 p.m., Pac-12 Networks) might have been what happened when Dickerson — and fellow starting forward Marquese Chriss, who had four fouls in the first half — went to the bench.

With those two sitting out, the Huskies relied on Malik Dime, a 6-foot-9 junior from Dakar, Senegal, by way of Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa, Iowa, and Devenir Duruisseau, a 6-foot-9 freshman from Palmdale, California, who prepped at Fishburne Military School in Waynesboro, Virginia, to anchor the post against a taller, more experienced Texas front line.

And Dime and Duruisseau were, in some ways, the stars of the game. Dime led the Huskies with 14 rebounds — six of them offensive — and scored 10 points and blocked three shots in 24 minutes. Duruisseau played 16 minutes, scored seven points and grabbed seven rebounds.

“If we would have had a drop-off,” Romar said, “we couldn’t have won the game.”

That’s why Romar says the Huskies have more “quality depth” in the frontcourt than he can ever remember having in his 14 years as UW’s coach. He’s had a few talented post players — Spencer Hawes, Jon Brockman, Jamaal Williams, Matthew Bryan-Amaning — but never four big bodies capable of excelling in legitimate playing time.

“In terms of impacting the game right now, we don’t have a huge drop-off,” Romar said.

Dickerson and Chriss are the most talented scorers, and Dickerson is UW’s best back-to-the-basket player. He says his game is all about feel — hence the dance lessons — and that his soft touch and innate low-post skills “really just comes naturally. I’ve never really worked on post moves or anything like that. It’s all about feeling. Feeling where your man is, and how to get the ball up.”

Chriss might be the most skilled player on the team, at any position, with elite athleticism at 6-foot-9 and 225 pounds. Dime is the Huskies’ best shot-blocker — Romar says he has a 7-foot, 5-inch wingspan — and can obviously rebound, too. Duruisseau is the most physical of the four. Romar describes him as “solid,” and says he recruited him because “we thought he was going to be a guy who played hard and did some intangible things. … That’s what he was against Texas.”

Mount St. Mary’s isn’t as talented as Texas, though Romar expects “a very good test,” particularly on the perimeter. The Mountaineers have attempted 58 3-pointers in two games — at Maryland and at Ohio State — though they’ve made just 29.3 percent of them.

“They’re picked to finish very high in their league,” Romar said. “They’ve already been on the road a couple times against quality opponents. … They haven’t won one against those two — Maryland and Ohio State — but they’ve been battle-tested a little bit with those two games.”