As Critics Emerge, Sprinkle Shrugs and Coaches On

On a weekend where the University of Washington basketball team will pause for a moment to honor the past, and hang Detlef Schrempf's retired No. 22 in the rafters, the Huskies still have to deal with the present.

After 59 games in charge in Montlake, with Wisconsin (19-9 overall, 11-6 Big Ten) next up for the UW (14-14, 6-11) on Saturday with a 1 p.m. tipoff at Alaska Airlines Arena, leave it to Danny Sprinkle to be totally candid about everything.

Asked this week about his two years spent coaching in Seattle so far, where he has a 27-32 overall record, Sprinkle said, "It's what I've expected, to be honest with you, and that's just being totally transparent. I knew it was going to be brutal the first two or three years. I knew I was going to be getting bashed. I knew the program I was taking over."

Well now.

What everyone is well aware of is this is a basketball program that has slipped over the past decade and a half to making a disheartening one NCAA Tournament appearance in all that time.

That the Huskies have had just four winning seasons over the past nine, with the outcome of this one still very much in question.

That the program talent level has dropped so much in recent years there are just four former Huskies currently playing in the NBA -- Dejounte Murray, Jaden McDaniels, Isaiah Stewart and Matisse Thybulle -- when there used to be double that or more.

For all of those reasons, Sprinkle revealed he was discouraged by some of his peers from coming to the Seattle, that there has been so much UW basketball malaise a serious rebuild was in order. Yet he didn't listen to them and came anyway.

Danny Sprinkle has a stressful moment. | Dave Sizer photo

"I had people telling me I was committing professional suicide by taking this job -- I didn't think that way," he said. "Did I know we had some deficiencies? Yeah. Did I know the league we were going into would be brutal? Yes, I did. Did I know the landscape with NIL? Yes. We have to find a way to navigate that moving forward."

As the injuries and the losses have piled up, especially over the past month, people for the first time have begun questioning Sprinkle's coaching ability online, unwilling to cut him any slack or permit him any excuses.

It doesn't seem to matter to them that 10 of the Huskies' 14 scholarship players have missed games this season after getting hurt, that just two of those players have appeared in all 28 games this season, that he might have the most injured team across the college landscape this season.

Sprinkle hears the detractors, loud and clear. He shrugs it off.

"Do I know some people are irrational about it? Yes, I do," he said. "I don't worry about those people."

Husky coach Danny Sprinkle keeps his eye on the ball. | Skylar Lin Visuals

So outside of his father Bill Sprinkle playing Husky football, which created a sentimental attachment to the school, Sprinkle said his motivation for leaving Utah State and taking on a basketball program that has fired six consecutive coaches prior to him is the task at hand.

Painstakingly building a winner. Doing what he's always done. Making something happen.

"That's just how I'm built," the Husky coach said. "I've always kind of had a chip on my shoulder and been the underdog, and that's not going to change. That's why I took this job -- it is a challenge."