SEATTLE – Jon Brockman sits against the wall in an auxiliary gym in Hec Edmundson Pavilion, catching his breath after scrimmaging for nearly two hours at a breakneck pace.
There are no coaches here – NCAA rules say that they can’t be – as most of the current University of Washington basketball players and a few former ones chase each other up and down the court on a recent afternoon. But that doesn’t mean the Huskies aren’t working hard or taking a summer workout lightly.
“I think guys are working a lot harder this summer,” said Brockman, leaning against the court’s padded wall that above him is streaked with his sweat.
“Right now coaches can’t do anything with us, but everyone is working just as hard as if the coaches were there. That’s good to see.”
The junior-to-be from Snohomish is one of three captains on this year’s team along with seniors Ryan Appleby and Tim Morris, a transfer from Stanford who practiced with Washington last season but didn’t play in games because of NCAA transfer rules.
Together, the three hope to lead the Huskies back to the NCAA tournament after a disappointing season that saw them miss the postseason in 2006-2007.
“After last year, we just know we don’t want that to happen again,” Brockman said. “Everyone has kind of taken it personally and put it on their own shoulders. There wasn’t any finger pointing at all. We just looked at ourselves and knew we had to get better.”
The Huskies will have to get better without one of their top players from last year. Last week, center Spencer Hawes became a member of the Sacramento Kings. And while Hawes will be missed by Washington, the Huskies can at least move forward without the “will he or won’t he” questions hanging over the program.
“We’ll miss Spencer, he was a big part of our team last year,” Appleby said. “It’s good though that we know now what he’s going to do so we can say, ‘Alright, this is the team we’re going to have next year, so we’ve got to move on.’ We wish Spencer was going to be back, but he’s not, so we’ve got to get ready for next year.”
The common assumption is that the Huskies will be a more up-tempo team without Hawes, much like they were in years past under Lorenzo Romar. But while Romar agrees that his team will play faster this year, he doesn’t blame Hawes for last year’s slower pace.
“That’s a misconception about last season,” Romar said. “We weren’t a slower team because of Spencer, he had no problem getting up and down the floor. We were a slower team because we didn’t defend as well. We plan on improving defensively this year, and that should create an opportunity for us to score more in transition.”
Romar, like his players, would have loved to have Hawes back, but he also thinks the center’s departure can open the door for other players to do good things.
“I think Quincy Pondexter is really going to step up and be improved next year,” he said. “With Spencer here, we went inside a lot and Quincy probably wasn’t freed up the way he would like to be.”
Romar echoed Brockman’s sentiments that last season’s disappointment can help the team in the upcoming season.
“We didn’t get to postseason play, and that’s something that the guys are accustomed to doing,” he said. “Maybe that serves as a wakeup call.”
In addition to hard work in the offseason, Washington also will benefit from extra time together later this summer. The team, not including incoming freshmen, is taking a trip to Greece in August to play five games. The trip also will allow the Huskies 10 extra practices.
“That will give us a good head start,” Brockman said. “It gives us a little extra time together, and anytime you can get a couple of games in the summer that’s a good thing.”
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