Inside The Huskies

Here's Where Big Ten Preseason Basketball Poll Has UW -- It's Not Last

With a nearly totally revamped roster, the Huskies will be an improved team.
Dan Raley|
Husky coach Danny Sprinkle keeps his eye on the ball.
Husky coach Danny Sprinkle keeps his eye on the ball. | Skylar Lin Visuals

Put it like this: the only way the University of Washington basketball team could go was up.

While the totally remade Huskies might have been hoping for something a little better, they turned up in 11th place, still in the bottom half of the standings, in the Big Ten preseason media poll released on Wednesday.

Yet that's an improvement of seven slots over the UW's last-place finish from Danny Sprinkle's first season as coach in Montlake.

This time around, Sprinkle has a dozen new players and just a pair of returnees in Zoom Diallo and center Franck Kepnang, with the assembled talent a noticeable upgrade from the season before.

"I think we're going to be a pretty good team," said Sprinkle, who's in Chicago for Big Ten Media Day.

The Huskies received 239 points in the balloting, leaving them six behind Indiana and another 33 behind Ohio State and the cutoff line between upper and lower half of the standings.

Purdue was picked to win the Big Ten regular-season title, receiving 25 of the available 28 first-place votes, and edging out Michigan.

In Big Ten Player of the Year voting, Purdue guard Braden Smith got the nod over Boilermakers' teammate Trey Kaufman-Renn, picking up 23 votes to Kaufman-Renn's 3.

In Freshman of the Year voting, the UW's Hannes Steinbach, a 6-foot-10 forward from Germany, finished tied for second with Michigan's Trey McKenney, each one vote behind Penn State's Kayden Mingo.

The Huskies play an exhibition game next week, hosting UNLV at noon on Sunday, Oct. 19, at Alaska Airlines Arena and open the season against Arkansas-Pine Bluff on Monday, Nov. 3, with the tipoff time still to be determined.

In choosing a starting lineup, Sprinkle most likely will put freshman JJ Mandaquit at point guard as his floor leaader but then have to think long and hard about who the other four players might be.

Big Ten Preseason Media Poll

1. Purdue (25), 501 points

2. Michigan (3), 472 points

3. UCLA, 417 points

4. Illinois, 411 points

5. Oregon, 338 points

6. Michigan State, 360 points

7. Wisconsin, 328 points

8. Iowa, 278 points

9. Ohio State, 272 points

10. Indiana, 245 points

11. Washington, 239 points

12. USC, 227 points

13. Maryland, 210 points

14. Nebraska, 149 points

15. Northwestern, 119 points

16. Minnesota, 95 points

17. Rutgers, 54 points

18. Penn State, 43 points

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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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