Washington’s schedule and roster both say the team that took a bus to Portland Tuesday afternoon is the same one that came back from the City of Roses after an embarrassing season-opening loss.
The Huskies, however, insist this is a totally different team.
“I think it’s two different teams,” said Washington coach Lorenzo Romar. “I think the first team collectively wasn’t sure who we were. I didn’t think roles hadn’t been defined at that point, we didn’t understand what it took to persevere and win ballgames, and now I think this team understands that much better than it did back then. That’s what you play your season for: you try to learn some of those lessons.”
The Huskies arrived in Portland Tuesday evening, two days before they’ll play Mississippi State in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Washington will play in its first NCAA tournament in three years as the Pac-10 champions and a No. 4 seed.
Neither of those things seemed very possible when the Huskies left Portland on Nov. 15. That was the date of Washington’s season opener, the night the Huskies, who had so much confidence and so many high hopes, opened the season with a thud by losing 80-74 to the University of Portland.
“After the Portland game, just thinking about being a four seed, playing in Portland again, that wasn’t going through our minds,” said senior forward Jon Brockman.
The Huskies say they didn’t play as a team that day, that they were still a collection of individuals trying to get too much down on their own. But rather than point fingers and let the season fall apart, the Huskies used that loss and a later blowout loss to Kansas as wakeup calls. The Huskies became better from that loss in Portland.
“We learned a lot from that loss, and we’ve come a long way since then,” Brockman said. “It feels like it was forever ago. We learned from it, and we’re a different team than the team that played in Portland last.”
One player who figures to be much improved in the Huskies’ second trip to Portland is freshman guard Isaiah Thomas. Playing in his first non-exhibition game as a Husky, Thomas struggled with foul trouble and his shooting, and played only 15 minutes before fouling out. Both he and his team are much improved since then.
“The Portland game was nasty,” Thomas said. “But it’s behind us and we’re ready for Mississippi State now. … We always thought we could fix it. It was just little things that we knew we could fix, just like that Kansas game. We knew we could fix those things and we overcame them and we succeeded this season.”
And if Thomas is right, if the Huskies have fixed the problems that haunted them in their last trip to Portland, the bus ride back to Seattle figures to be a lot more enjoyable this time around.
“I truly do hope so,” junior forward Quincy Pondexter said. “I think we got that bad game out of the way in Portland, and I hope these next two are pretty exciting and great basketball.”
Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on UW sports, check out the Huskies blog at heraldnet.com/huskiesblog
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