SEATTLE — This isn’t exactly the starting five most people had in mind when the Huskies kicked off the men’s basketball season last month, but so far head coach Lorenzo Romar likes the results he’s getting out of his latest lineup shuffle.
Sure Jon Brockman is in there, and Ryan Appleby working his way back into the lineup after an injury was no shock, but the other three players who have started the past two games are probably a surprise to at least a few fans.
As has been the case all season, Romar has put a premium on defensive effort when it comes to picking a starting lineup, and the group he has gone with the past two games — Brockman, Appleby, Artem Wallace, Tim Morris, and Joel Smith — is far from the group he started the year with.
“These guys that are starting right now, it just seems like their mindset is so much of, ‘I just want to do what is asked of me and I’m going to work hard for that,’” said Romar, who plans to use the same lineup when the Huskies host Cal State Northridge this afternoon. “And it’s not that the other guys are just rebelling, it’s just that these stand out as putting a little bit more into it than others.”
Romar has used three lineups in the past four games, and 10 players have started games this season. Only Brockman has started all 10 games.
This lineup means that junior guard Justin Dentmon, who started 59 of his first 65 games as a Husky, is, for now anyway, coming off the bench. So is sophomore forward Quincy Pondexter, who started 22 games as a freshman, and was pegged by many to be a breakout star this season after showing flashes of brilliance his first year.
Instead, Tim Morris and Joel Smith, who both redshirted last year, and Artem Wallace have worked their way into the lineup. And while defense is still Romar’s focal point, he said his current lineup is working out well on both ends of the court.
“What we are beginning to notice is that that group does not turn the ball over as much,” he said. “I think that group tries to share the ball.”
Wallace, who barely, and sometimes never, got off the bench in Washington’s first seven games, is now developing into a solid second option behind Brockman in the paint.
“It’s primarily defense and he’s safe,” Romar said of Wallace. “He’s not going to really hurt you when he’s out there. He’s not going to have a whole lot of turnovers. He’s really smart, he understands offensively what we’re doing, he’s experienced.”
Freshman Matthew Bryan-Amaning is one of several players to earn, then lose, a starting job, but he’s fine with his role right now.
“Obviously it’s an adjustment,” he said. “Probably none of the recruits or anybody coming into college is used to coming off the bench. At a big D-1 school, everyone is used to being the guy, but I’m just trying to do anything I can to help the team win. If that means bringing energy off the bench, I’ll bring energy off the bench. If it means I have a starting role, I have a starting role. Right now I don’t really care about any personal stats. Just as long as we’re getting Ws I’m happy.”
Romar can relate to his non-starters more than a lot of coaches with NBA experience. He said he was never a full-time starter in his basketball career with two exceptions: One was his sophomore year in junior college before transferring to Washington. And the other? Well, let’s just say the coach might have been biased.
“On Athletes in Action I was a coach, so I started,” Romar said of the team he played for after his NBA career.
Romar knows what it’s like to fight for a starting job, so just because the latest lineup seems to be to Romar’s liking now, don’t assume it will stay intact all season.
“When you’re a part of a team, you’ve got to keep plugging away, because things don’t always end the way they began,” he said. “There are some times that guys are in situations when they learn the thing that they were lacking, then you can never take them off the floor because they’ve got everything else.”
No TV for LSU game: Unless you’re in the South, or have access to FSN South through a dish or cable package, you won’t be able to see Washington’s Dec. 29 game at LSU. A school official said that ESPN holds the rights to the game, but does not plan on airing it. ESPN has agreed to let FSN South show the game, but not FSN Northwest.
Contact Herald Writer John Boyle at jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on University of Washington athletics, check out the Huskies blog at heraldnet.com /huskiesblog.
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