Washington men’s basketball coach Lorenzo Romar said earlier this week that his team had not faced this much adversity since it started the 2003-04 season 0-5 in Pacific-10 Conference play.
Of course, in the sixth conference game of that season, Nate Robinson led a stunning comeback at Oregon State that gave the Huskies their first win and was the catalyst for vaulting Washington to the level it has reached today.
Romar hopes a road win today will help propel the Huskies to a strong finish and another high seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Washington will try to put last week’s disappointing losses at California and Stanford behind it and gain a bit of revenge when it plays at Washington State at 2 p.m. today.
Romar said he is happy with the way the team has recovered in practice this week after losing to Cal by two, then losing a three-point lead with two seconds to play before falling in overtime to Stanford. Romar said sometimes losses like that can send a team reeling into a free fall, but doesn’t believe it will happen this time.
“You can’t do anything about the past except learn from it,” Romar said. “You regroup and figure it out.”
Still, the losses stung. Senior forward Bobby Jones called them two of the toughest losses he’s been involved with.
“I never thought of or experienced anything like this,” said Jones, who was 1-for-11 against Stanford. “I’m a firm believer that things do happen for a reason. Maybe it wasn’t our game to win (against Stanford). Maybe somebody wanted us to learn a lesson.”
“The main thing is us just recovering,” senior Mike Jensen said. “We can’t point fingers. If we would have played better the whole game (against Stanford), we wouldn’t have had to be in that position. We told the young guys that every single team is going to have games like this. Every team is going to have games they shouldn’t have lost.”
Washington (5-4 Pacific-10, 16-4 overall) still believes that another one of those games it shouldn’t have lost was its 78-71 home defeat at the hands of Washington State (2-7, 9-9). In that Jan. 7 game, the Huskies played lazy defense, allowing WSU to shoot 53.6 percent, and let the Cougars’ size hurt them on offense (Washington shot 40.4 percent and was out-rebounded 32-28).
What makes that defeat even more disappointing is that Washington State has lost all six of its games since then, though no loss has been by more than 10 points and four have been by five points or less.
“We’ve demonstrated a degree of mental toughness,” WSU coach Dick Bennett said. “In almost every game we’ve lost, we’ve come back with a chance to tie or take a lead late in the game. We just haven’t been good enough to go over the top.”
Washington State again will be without point guard Derrick Low, who broke his foot just before the Washington game. Of course, it didn’t matter much the first time against the Huskies and Romar doesn’t expect it to matter much this time either.
That’s because WSU has gotten excellent play from the guards filling in for Low. Before the Washington game, Josh Akognon was averaging 8.1 points in his first 11 games. Against the Huskies, Akognon had a career-high 27 points, making six of 10 3-pointers, and since then is averaging 16.3 points and is shooting 49 percent on 3-pointers in league play. Kyle Weaver, who had 19 points, six rebounds and six assists against Washington, is averaging 4.8 assists and is shooting 55 percent in league play.
The Huskies’ biggest challenge will be making sure it is aware of where Akognon is, something that didn’t happen in the first game when Akognon used screen after screen to get open.
“You can’t let him get away from you,” Romar said. “He’s so effective, with such a great release. He does a great job of using screens. I don’t think he has many games when he’s completely off. When he gets in a zone, he’s really difficult to stop. You can’t give him a lot of open looks. That’s easier said than done.”
On offense, Washington needs other players besides Brandon Roy to step up. Roy had 27 points and was 8-for-10 shooting in the first game, but the rest of the starters combined for 28 points and shot just 7-for-25 from the field. In particular, Robbie Cowgill and Ivory Clark frustrated Jamaal Williams (4-for-14) inside and Jones finished with seven points, five from the foul line. Jon Brockman managed just one point.
“Sometimes a season can end up bad and you can point back to a game where it messed you up so much mentally that you never recovered from it,” Romar said. “Hopefully that doesn’t happen.”
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