SEATTLE — It wasn’t even two weeks ago that the Huskies returned from the desert, feeling good about a road split with Arizona and Arizona State.
Washington was 3-4 in Pac-10 play, not great, but still in the conversation when people talked about possible NCAA Tournament-worthy teams.
Three games later, the mood has shifted greatly in Montlake. The Huskies returned from that road trip looking forward to four straight home games. They saw it as a chance to climb in the conference standings. Instead, Washington lost three in a row at home, and to avoid four in a row, the Huskies will have to beat fifth-ranked UCLA this afternoon.
“It has caught me off-guard,” Lorenzo Romar said of his team’s struggles. “I’ve always felt with our teams, by this time of year, we were playing our best basketball. And that’s not the case this year.”
Instead of being in postseason contention, the Huskies are searching for answers. How could they lose three in a row at home for the first time in five years? How can they lose two games at home by double digits in a week after not doing so in more than four years?
“I wish I knew what it was so I could fix it, but I don’t know what it is,” said junior guard Jon Brockman. “The hardest thing is that we’re capable of doing a lot better than we’re doing. If we play right, we can win games in the Pac-10, and that’s probably the most frustrating part of this whole thing.”
As it stands now, the Huskies are 12-11 overall, and 3-7 in the Pac-10, good for ninth place. It would take a miraculous run or winning the Pac-10 tournament at this point for Washington to avoid missing the NCAA Tournament for a second straight season.
Romar, who said he stayed up until 2 a.m. searching for answers following Thursday’s loss to USC, is putting the blame on himself.
“I don’t think I would put it on the players,” he said. “I would put it on me. I have not done a good enough job of getting us at a place where we need to be right now.”
Romar, like his players and Husky fans, has been surprised by this season’s struggles. He emphasized the importance of his team not losing its confidence.
“You’ve got to go out on the floor and believe that you’re going to win the game,” he said. “You may not, but you’ve got to believe it. And with us, we’ve got to be able to get over this hump where we’ve lost and some things have happened to us that just haven’t happened to this team or program in the last five years. You just don’t drop three in a row at home. You definitely don’t loose by double digits at home. There are some things that have happened that maybe have staggered us a little bit.”
The first challenge for the Huskies is to win today to end their losing streak. After that, they know it will take wins at home an on the road to avoid another disappointing season.
“The only way to get out of a hole is to win,” said Brockman. “This is putting a lot more pressure on us to go out and play better on the road. In the Pac-10, you can’t drop your home games, and when you do drop them, that means you just have to make up ground when you’re playing at someone else’s place.”
Contact Herald Writer John Boyle at jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on University of Washington sports, check out the Huskies blog at heraldnet.com /huskiesblog
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