Don't Blink: Huskies Visit Tucson with Unwanted 20-20 Vision
No matter what happens in Tucson on Saturday, the University of Washington basketball team, for all intents and purposes, has assured itself of an ignominious finish.
A dismal 20-loss season.
At 5-19, the Huskies will embrace this unwanted milestone against the Arizona Wildcats over the weekend, and, if not, most certainly 11 or 12 days later in the Pac-12 tournament.
The only way out of this predicament is to win a national championship, and the odds of that happening are about as good as the pandemic disappearing next week.
Zero chance.
Arizona will offer a huge obstacle, having beaten the UW by 27 points in Seattle earlier in the season.
Twenty defeats has happened just five times before in 119 seasons of Husky basketball.
Twenty setbacks means your program is in big trouble.
Twenty losses bring eventual change.
Bob Bender's first UW team in 1993-94 finished a low-bar 5-22, and his teams in 1999-2000 and 2000-01 each limped in at 10-20, ultimately leading to his dismissal.
A lot of people thought Bender got way too many chances to try and rebuild the program.
Lorenzo Romar's final club in 2016-17 went 9-22, abruptly ending his 15-year UW coaching stay.
Like it or not, Mike Hopkins and his fourth Husky team soon will join this fraternity of win-loss ugliness, putting enormous pressure on him to show dramatic improvement next season or find another job elsewhere.
If these guys don't win again this season, they finish with 5 victories, tying Bender's inaugural team for the fewest in a season in program history.
These are records not meant to be broken.
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