Out of the Dawg house

SEATTLE – Justin Dentmon said he forgot all about Stanford the day after it happened. Washington coach Lorenzo Romar respectfully disagrees.

How could Dentmon truly put what was the most crushing defeat for the Huskies in several years behind him, particularly when he was being personally held accountable for the loss?

It was three weeks ago when the Huskies led Stanford by three points with two seconds left on the road, only to have Dentmon foul the Cardinal’s Chris Hernandez on a 3-point attempt. Hernandez made his free throws and Stanford won in overtime, and television cameras sent the image of Romar angrily chastising his freshman point guard, who spent the entire overtime period on the bench.

If Dentmon is to be believed, he left the game behind him immediately, but that’s not what Romar saw.

“He was like someone who had got punched and it’s still stinging, and he’s trying to act like it didn’t hurt but he’s still wobbly a little bit,” Romar said of Dentmon’s demeanor following Stanford. “But he hung in there. He just got right back in the batter’s box. He got off the canvas and put his chin right in there. But you knew it was bothering him.”

The Stanford game was the low point in what had been a three-week struggle for Dentmon. After a strong start to his career, the Carbondale, Ill. native found himself unable to score and turning the ball over, in the process losing the confidence of his teammates, and losing confidence in himself. But in the three games since Stanford, Dentmon seems to have turned things around. In that time, he’s averaging 14.0 points on 58.3 percent shooting and is clearly playing with more confidence.

“I got down on myself for a day or two,” Dentmon said. “But my mom called and told me to get over it, and my teammates said it’s just a mistake, everyone makes mistakes. It woke me up. Since then I’ve stopped trying to think so much and am just going out and playing.”

Dentmon was one of the few bright spots in last week’s loss to Washington State, scoring 14 points. He had 12 against USC, and in Saturday’s victory over UCLA, Dentmon had 16 points and made two free throws with eight seconds left to make it a three-point game.

“Justin stepped up tonight,” UW star Brandon Roy said. “He made up for that Stanford game. Now he can put it behind him.”

“For good reason, people were very critical of Justin after the Stanford game, and prior to that,” Romar said. “He’s bounced back now with three very, very good performances. He’s done a fantastic job for us. Many asked, ‘Did you think he’d bounce back?’ Because Justin has great character, I knew he would, and he has.”

On Saturday, Dentmon often found himself defended by UCLA star point guard Jordan Farmar. Farmar was a freshman on the Bruins’ NCAA tourney team last year, and said playing point guard for a top team as a freshman is not easy.

“It’s tough, there’s a lot of expectations,” he said. “We were trying to key on Roy and (Dentmon) made some big shots. He was looking to be aggressive. It was ironic because he was the guy we were willing to be soft to.”

Romar said when he was trying to talk Dentmon through his struggles, Farmar was the player he most often pointed to.

“I told him last year there was a freshman who averaged almost four turnovers a game, and sometimes would get seven, nine turnovers, and he was pretty good,” Romar said. “And that was Jordan Farmar. If you believe in someone who is young, you’ve got to let them play through their mistakes.”

After scoring 17 points against Gonzaga in the Huskies’ other big win of the season, it may be the bigger the stage, the better Dentmon plays. He says he certainly enjoyed the challenge of going against Farmar.

“He’s considered the best point guard in the league, one of the best in the country,” Dentmon said. “I love going against those kinds of players. It lets me show everyone what I can do. I think I’ve shown my teammates that I can be a passer and a scorer, and I think they have a lot of confidence in me.”