SEATTLE — After spending the first two-plus weeks of the regular season globetrotting, the Washington Huskies are about to become homebodies.
They opened the season in Shanghai. They played two home games before leaving for the Bahamas, where they played three games in three days during Thanksgiving weekend.
And now they’re back home for eight consecutive games, beginning with Sunday’s 6 p.m. matchup against Cal State-Fullerton at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.
It will be UW’s first game since Friday, Nov. 27, when it beat Charlotte 71-66 on the final day of the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in the Bahamas. The Huskies spent the next day flying back to Seattle, landed at SeaTac at 12:05 a.m. Sunday, then took Sunday and Monday off before returning to practice on Tuesday.
Those long trips necessitated some time off before resuming play, coach Lorenzo Romar said.
“When we scheduled, we knew that between going to China and going to the Bahamas, the level of competition that we were going to face, it was going to take every bit of what we had within us to be ready to go and fight through the travel and all that,” Romar said Friday. “So we tried to be a week removed (from a game) from when we got back from the Bahamas, which we were.”
Six nonconference opponents will visit Hec Ed between Sunday and Dec. 28 — Fullerton, TCU, Montana, Oakland, Seattle University and UC Santa Barbara — and the Huskies play their first two Pac-12 games at home, too, against UCLA and USC on Jan. 1 and Jan. 3.
They won’t play a game at a different venue until a Jan. 9 game against Washington State in Pullman. By then, the Huskies will have spent about 40 days in Seattle, aside from any individual holiday travel.
“I think these next couple home games will be great for us, because we don’t have to travel,” said senior guard Andrew Andrews, who leads the Pac-12 in scoring with 21.7 points per game. “We get to settle down and really focus in on practice.”
UW’s Sunday opponent, Cal-State Fullerton, improved its season record to 6-1 with a 70-61 victory on Friday night over Seattle U at KeyArena. The Titans also visited UW in December 2012, and nearly won — two free throws by C.J. Wilcox in the final seconds gave the Huskies a narrow 74-72 victory.
They are coached now by Dedrique Taylor, who was hired in April 2013 and compiled a 20-42 record in his first two seasons.
“You can see Coach has those guys believing,” Romar said. “Those guys are playing with a lot of confidence. I think Coach Dietrich has instilled that in that group. You can just see it when you watch them play.”
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