Some day after links, quotes and thoughts

Published 4:06 pm Sunday, March 22, 2009

Sorry for the lack of blog activity following yesterday’s game, but after I finished writing for today’s paper, I wanted to get on the road and head back from Portland as soon as possible. Besides, the wonderful wireless that the NCAA charged 10 bucks a day for (and that’s the discounted rate if you pre-pay) decided to go out last night while dozens of reporters were on deadline. So blogging would have been tough at that point anyway.

But I digress.

If you missed today’s paper, we had this game story looking Washington’s loss to Purdue, a story looking at Jon Brockman’s final game as a Husky, and a notebook that leads off with a look ahead to next year. There’s also a lot of great photos in this gallery by Herald photog Jennifer Buchanan.

As a few different people have pointed out, having the Pac-10 champs go out in the second round doesn’t look too good for the conference, but on the other hand, Arizona, the last team in from the Pac-10, is in the sweet 16, and as I write this, USC is tied with second-seed Michigan State in the second half. I think this tournament is showing us what a lot of us thought about the Pac-10: it’s deep, but lacking a power house team like UCLA the last couple of years. That’s why the Pac-10 champ Huskies are home this weekend while the fifth and sixth best teams in the conference may both be playing next weekend. And as Lorenzo Romar has pointed out before, matchups are a big a deal as where you play and your seed, and Purdue was just a tough matchup for the Huskies. Meanwhile Arizona got a 13 seed, Cleveland State, in the second round.

Still, considering where the team was the last two years and what was expected this year, it’s hard to not call this season a success for Washington.

“Absolutely,” Romar said. “We gave it everything we had and that made it successful as far as I’m concerned. The win-loss record, winning the conference was great. But when a team gives everything is has to be a team, as far as I’m concerned it’s successful. And that’s what that team did.”

And looking ahead to next year, the Huskies have a lot of talent coming back and coming in with the next recruiting class, so the hope on Montlake is that next year’s team can avoid a tournament drought. Quincy Pondexter, whose emergence in the latter part of the season is another reason for optimism, went so far as to guarantee his team will be back.

“I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen,” he said. “I’ll take that upon my shoulders. If we don’t make it, the whole city of Seattle can be mad at me. It’ll be my fault if we don’t make it. I’ll make sure I’m a leader for this team.”