Inside The Huskies

Diomande Enters Transfer Portal, the Fourth Husky to Do So

The French newcomer never got into a game for Danny Sprinkle's UW team.
Dan Raley|
Dominique Diomande warms up before the Nebraska game.
Dominique Diomande warms up before the Nebraska game. | Skylar Lin Visuals

On game night for the University of Washington basketball team this past season, Dominique Diomande went from sitting on the bench in street clothes to later pulling on warm-ups, and that was it.

The 6-foot-8 European player joined the Huskies in January as a winter quarter enrollee -- as someone who had competed in a French pro league and in African national-team competition -- and he never got near the scorer's table.

He was with Danny Sprinkle's first UW team for 16 games in all, or more than half of the season, and no one outside of the team got a good look at what he does.

"If he's clearly better, I've got to play him," the coach said. "It's my job to play the best players."

However, Sprinkle didn't use him at all, which might have suggested the French man was somewhat of a project and maybe not quite the player as advertised. On Wednesday, Diomande entered the transfer portal, according to ESPN.

From a last-place Big Ten team (13-18 overall 4-16 league), Diomande becomes the fourth player to turn to the portal, joining 6-foot-4 freshman guard Jase Butler, 6-foot-8 redshirt freshman forward Christian King and 6-foot-10 junior forward KC Ibekwe.

In a cautionary note, there have been plenty of international players who have showed up in Montlake, with 7-foot Icelandic center Flosi Sigurdsson coming to mind, who physically couldn't hack it, hence all they did was sit.

Dominique Diomande lets fly with a shot in pregame warm-ups before the UW faced Nebraska.
Dominique Diomande lets fly with a shot in pregame warm-ups before the UW faced Nebraska. | Skylar Lin Visuals

Yet even before he put the Frenchman through any practice steps, Sprinkle strongly suggested he wasn't going to play the kid this season.

"It wouldn't be fair for me to throw him in there at Ohio State in a Big Ten game for your first action," Sprinkle said. "I know everyone wants to see him and all that, but I've got to be fair to him and fair to the team, too. At the end of the day, he's got to earn it. I don't care who it is. I don't care if LeBron James is here. Come and earn it, and you're going to play."

He didn't do that. Obvious obstacles were Diomande was just 19, fairly slender at 190 pounds, still getting acclimated to a new country and likely adjusting to a competitive level that might have been higher than the French pro league he came from.

While the coach spoke highly about Diomande's quickness, Sprinkle also mentioned that all of his players needed to spend the offseason in the weight room to become stronger and better prepared for physical Big Ten play.

In watching him on game nights, the new guy seemed to have a decent shot, plenty of bounce and was fully engaged in cheering on his new teammates.

For Dominque Diomande, that will be as close as he gets to becoming a Husky basketball player.

For the latest Husky football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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