Matchup with Colorado represents test of improvement for UW

By Christian Caple

The News Tribune

BOULDER, Colo. — Nothing the Washington Huskies men’s basketball team has accomplished this season merits celebration. Not their 9-14 record, certainly, and not their 2-9 mark in Pac-12 play. Not the way they’ve defended all season (poorly), not the way they’ve shot the ball against league opponents (also poorly), and not the way they rolled over in a 107-66 loss to UCLA last week before a sellout crowd at home.

Yet if this season ever had a high point — or maybe just the highest low point — it probably came Jan. 18 against the Colorado Buffaloes, who lugged an 0-5 league record into a game that night against Washington at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.

Colorado led that game by 17 points early in the second half, but the Huskies came back to win in overtime, 85-83, their second Pac-12 victory and perhaps their most, uh, inspiring performance of the season to that point. Sure, the Buffaloes aren’t any good, but they’re certainly good enough to beat the Huskies (plus, Ken Pomeroy ranks Colorado 84th nationally; none of the eight other teams UW defeated this season ranks higher than 200th). And for a team that doesn’t always play with maximum effort, erasing a 17-point deficit seemed to suggest the Huskies were making tangible progress.

They haven’t won since. Colorado, meanwhile, won three of its next five games after beginning league play 0-8, including a 74-65 upset of first-place Oregon in Boulder. So UW enters Thursday’s game against the Buffaloes at the Coors Events Center hoping to prove it has, indeed, improved since the first time it eked out a victory against a Colorado team that can’t be pleased with how its season has gone, either.

Colorado coach Tad Boyle told reporters after Thursday’s practice that both teams qualify for “better than our records indicate” status, and that “I wouldn’t be afraid to say that we are both underachieving up until this point.”

Maybe. Colorado certainly is, with three fifth-year seniors in its starting lineup. The Huskies, on the other hand, might simply be this bad, despite spectacular play all year from freshman guard Markelle Fultz. Against league opponents, UW ranks last in field-goal percentage, free-throw percentage and defensive rebounding percentage, ninth in defensive field-goal percentage and 11th in scoring margin and 3-point percentage.

The season was lost long ago, and there is little left for the Huskies to play for. After the embarrassment that was Saturday’s blowout loss to UCLA — the fourth-largest margin of defeat in UW’s history — they’re simply trying to regroup and convince themselves they’re still capable of winning a basketball game. Any basketball game.

“I did think we were making progress up until that UCLA game,” said UW coach Lorenzo Romar, likely referring to close losses to Arizona and USC. “So we have to get back to where we were before the UCLA game. We can’t take that UCLA game and have that define everything that we’re doing, like that’s the team that we are. Because that wasn’t the team that we are.”

This might not be the same Colorado team, either. Starting forwards Xavier Johnson and Wesley Gordon — both seniors — sat out the Buffaloes’ 77-66 loss at California last week, both suspended for violating team rules. Boyle told reporters after Wednesday’s practice that both players remain “day to day,” and that he hasn’t decided whether they will play in Thursday’s game.

That would be a boon for the Huskies: Johnson had 24 points and 11 rebounds the first time these teams met, and Gordon had five points, 11 rebounds and five blocked shots.

Romar said he’s been focusing mostly on what UW did wrong against Colorado the first time around.

“They were up 17 in the second half. How did that happen? Our team needs to understand that,” Romar said. “Our team needs to also understand when we finally caught them, we were up four, (and) we had a number of breakdowns defensively where we could not just put them away. It’s important for our team to understand those things.”

And soon. The remaining schedule presents few realistic opportunities for victory. If the Huskies have made any progress at all in the last three weeks, it needs to show up on Thursday night in Boulder, if only to prove this team still cares about getting better.