Inside The Huskies

Huskies Staring At Success Once More On Basketball Court

Early returns seem to indicate the UW will be much more of a player this season.
Dan Raley|
The Husky basketball season tips off against Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
The Husky basketball season tips off against Arkansas-Pine Bluff. | Skylar Lin Visuals

In opening another season on Monday night against Arkansas-Pine Bluff, the University of Washington basketball program hasn't been to the NCAA Tournament in six years. Hasn't won 20 games or more in six long winters. Hasn't been nationally ranked for five seasons.

In the college game, that's a lifetime.

And yet a lot of people seem to think things are about to change for the better for the Huskies, with second-year coach Danny Sprinkle one of the eternal optimists.

"This ain't last year's team," Sprinkle said of his 13-18 last-place Big Ten finisher.

Multiple reasons point to impeding positivity for this Husky team, plus signs that come over and above the annual wishful thinking that always persists, such as when a local media person publicly promised a 2020 Final Four appearance. That team UW team stumbled to a miserable 15-17 record.

What's different this time begins with the demanding Sprinkle, who isn't going to settle for anything less than sufficient progress and appears to have everything moving in place to succeed.

He and his coaching staff have recruited maybe the deepest collection of Montlake talent since the Brandon Roy and Nate Robinson teams. Freshmen Hannes Steinbach and JJ Mandaquit, a 6-foot-11 forward from Germany and a 6-foot-1 point guard from Hawaii, represent elite players.

And he has generous donors who not only have built him a new basketball practice facility that recently opened but are aggresively backing name, image and likeness demands at a high enough rate to attract guys who can play.

Once more, the skeptics out there will remind you the Huskies have averaged 17 losses per season over the past six years.

In the process, the UW continued to lose even with a pair of first-round draft picks playing together in Isaiah Stewart and Jaden McDaniels, and after three former Kentucky players transferred in at different times but were unable to replicate any blue-blood success here.

The college basketball experts, taking note of Sprinkle's vigorous recruitment of the transfer portal and high school ranks, seem convinced things are about to change in Montlake.

The preseason Associated Press poll, after tabulating early ballots, has the Huskies sitting outside the Top 25, but for now coming up as the 35th team -- which would make the UW an NCAA Tournament entry if that fanfare held up.

"Hopefully they're right," Sprinkle said of the AP poll.

On3 Big Ten power rankings currrently list the previously last-place Huskies at No. 6, which is higher than teams such as Michigan State, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio State and Oregon -- all conference foes that beat the UW last season.

KFord Ratings have the UW pegged No. 50 in its national power rankings, a position that once more would have Sprinkle's guys included in the NCAA Tournament field.

"Did we get better? Yeah, I think we did," the UW coach said. "But now we've got to go put it on the court and we've got to continue to get better every day."

Sprinkle will remind everyone that most of the guys on his 15-man roster have never played in the NCAA Tournament, that they haven't won anything yet. He didn't have to mention that the Huskies have appeared in March Madness just once over the past 14 seasons.

Yet through it all -- the improved image, the added expectations, the glossy projections -- progress appears to be happening.

"That's got to be our chip on the shoulder; that's what we've got to get to," Sprinkle said of the NCAA tournament. "It is preseason, and I don't put too much stock in it, but I'd rather be 35th than 105th."

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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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