UW’s Romar has been the picture of calm this season

  • By Scott M. Johnson Herald Writer
  • Sunday, March 21, 2010 9:47pm
  • SportsSports

SAN JOSE, Calif. — When an extremely select, but somewhat vocal, minority of people began making rumblings about Lorenzo Romar being in over his head in early February, it could have only meant one of two things.

A. The University of Washington’s longtime men’s basketball coach was beginning to lose his touch; or,

B. Guys who live in their parents’ basement and blog in their underwear probably shouldn’t be able to broadcast their views to the rest of the world.

Of course, the Internet isn’t going away, and so the uninformed passion of sports fans will continue to make some noise.

But another thing that isn’t going away anytime soon — perhaps to the chagrin of a few blognerds — is UW’s Romar.

Not the type to say I told you so, Romar will let his recent run speak for itself. After trying to squeeze the best out of an underachieving basketball team midway through the 2009-10 season, Romar hit all the right buttons down the stretch. His Huskies will make their third Sweet 16 appearance since 2005 this week, and Romar’s status within the UW athletic department is as solid as ever — just as it was even before the NCAA tournament run.

And as for the doubters?

“Those people have absolutely no clue what they’re talking about,” senior Quincy Pondexter said after Saturday’s convincing win over New Mexico in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

In a sense, this could have been one of Romar’s finest coaching jobs, and that’s saying a lot when considering that he’s taken the Huskies to five NCAA tournaments in eight seasons — UW went to just two in the previous 18 — and given the program its first outright conference title since the Pac-8 became the Pac-10 in 1979.

Saddled with the highest preseason ranking (No. 14) as they’ve had in 11 years, the Huskies proved to have plenty of issues early on. Chemistry, role-defining and an inability to fill the shoes of graduated seniors Jon Brockman and Justin Dentmon were factors in UW dropping out of the Top 25 — for good — in early January. By the third week of the Pac-10 schedule, the Huskies were 2-5 in conference play and left for dead in terms of NCAA tournament possibilities.

And yet Romar stayed the course throughout, never showing a hint of panic. That calm demeanor helped UW weather the storm, and the Huskies won nine games in a row and 13 of 15.

“He never changed the game plan,” freshman Tyreese Breshers said. “He never ran us harder or anything. He stayed positive. He told us we shouldn’t get our heads down, we should forget about the national press and just play ball. And that’s what we did.”

Breshers said UW’s early struggles had more to do with the players than anything Romar was preaching.

“We’ve never doubted him,” Breshers said. “We always bought into what he said. At the beginning, we kind of struggled buying into it. But toward the end, we started buying in, and we’ve had success because of it.”

The biggest key, to both Romar and his players, came when roles started getting defined. Romar himself said early on that the wealth of talent on this year’s team might make it difficult to solidify a rotation. After moving forward Justin Holiday into the starting lineup for a defensive spark, returning Venoy Overton to his role of bench energizer and finding roles for outside shooters Elston Turner Jr. and Scott Suggs off the bench, Romar saw his Huskies soar to new heights.

“Coach Romar told us to get past the national rankings and what people were saying,” Breshers said. “We just had to prove it to ourselves that we can play our best and go out and show it. And that’s what we did.”

Part of the key to this season has been Romar’s steady presence amid stormy waters.

“I thought, at the time, that the last thing the guys needed was a beat-down,” said Romar, adding that he patterns his demeanor after former Sonics coach Lenny Wilkens.

When Romar returned to his alma mater in 2002, the program was down and struggling to keep top in-state recruits from going to the greener pastures of Arizona, North Carolina and UCLA. But the charismatic coach made the school’s backyard his priority, and kept top-tier recruits like Brandon Roy and Jon Brockman from leaving the state.

As former Herald columnist John Sleeper wrote early in Romar’s tenure: “Years from now, we’ll look at Romar as the man that saved major college basketball in Seattle.”

During his eight seasons at UW, Romar has won 171 games, third most in the program’s history. This season, he tied legendary coaches Hec Edmundson for the most 25-win seasons in program history (four) and Marv Harshman for the second-most 20-win seasons (four).

In college basketball circles, his reputation has never been higher.

“His reputation in this business is terrific,” Butler coach Brad Stevens said before both schools advanced to the Sweet 16 with regional wins in San Jose over the weekend. “It’s not a big surprise when you have a person of that caliber that he has a team of that caliber.”

New Mexico coach Steve Alford said the national respect is due in part to the fact that Romar “does it the right way. (He is) one of those guys in the profession that you root for because he and his staff work well, and they do it the right way, and you always appreciate that.”

Of course, the people who hold the most respect for Romar are his players. Even when things were looking bleak earlier this season, the only naysayers were outside the UW locker room.

“I defend Coach Romar 130 percent,” Pondexter said. “He does everything in his power to give us the ability to win games. There was a time when we, as a team, were under-performing. He was doing everything he could, coaching-wise, but we weren’t playing well.

“For those people to criticize him during the regular season, he can have the last laugh. Look how he’s doing now.”

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