Inside The Huskies

Meet The UW Basketball Player Urged To Be Wild, Crazy And Untamed

This freshman from Arkansas has impressed everyone with his relentless effort.
Dan Raley|
Courtland Muldrew is a freshman from Arkansas with a lot of motivation to succeed at the UW.
Courtland Muldrew is a freshman from Arkansas with a lot of motivation to succeed at the UW. | Dan Raley

In his first season in Montlake, Danny Sprinkle used to wonder out loud why many of his University of Washington basketball players weren't more emotionally involved in a Big Ten schedule that demanded it.

Truthfully, too many of his original Huskies were passive by nature and chose to compartmentalize their intensity, and that sometimes proved to be the difference in those often difficult, take-no-prisoners games.

Sprinkle no longer has this issue in year two.

One reason is freshman guard Courtland Muldrew, a live-wire act from Springdale, Arkansas, near Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas, which he shunned to become a Husky and play for a coach he strongly identifies with.

The Husky leader calls the 6-foot-3 Muldrew his most competitive player, the second coming of long-ago UW game-night tormentor Venoy Overton, a pest even.

"Like I tell him, 'Dude, you're a wild banshee, man,' " Sprinkle said. "I don't want to tame that. I want him to be crazy. I want it to be wild at times. Will it burn us at times? Yeah, but it's going to help us win some games, too. And it's going to help him be a real special player in time here, too."

Muldrew, one of four UW freshmen along with 6-foot-11 Hannes Steinbach, 6-foot-3 point guard JJ Mandaquit and 6-foot-5 shooting guard Jasir Rencher, left Arkansas as the all-time leading scorer on that state's 6A level with 1,110 career points.

He arrived in Seattle and instantly became defensive-minded at his coach's urging, looking to keep others from putting the ball in the hoop.

"He takes joy in picking up Zoom [Diallo], Desmond [Claude}, Wesley [Yates III] and Bryson [Tucker} and those guys, those older guys," Sprinkle said, "He loves to be that little pest. Like literally that's what he is, and he's really good at it."

Arkansas, with the very persuasive John Calipari in charge, couldn't keep Muldrew in the state, while the Huskies sort of maneuvered they way into his recruitment.

"I've been in Arkansas my whole life," the guard said. "I had to leave that behind. I felt leaving my family behind was going to help me in the end game just to spread my wings and get my name out there."

Muldrew and Sprinkle made a connection because they both approach basketball with a decided take-no-prisoners edge about themselves.

The guard became the Huskies' first player commitment of this recruiting class. Sprinkle has been overly blunt in motivating him. It works for them.

"He's a very tough guy -- my dad loves that," Muldrew said. "That's how my dad was with me. Anything he says, I can handle, even if it's like the nastiest thing. He's going to be on you. He wants you to reach your goal. I have no problem with how he talks. I just think that's going to make me a better person."

Sprinkle says his Arkansas import never takes a day off, that there's nothing fake about the guard's competitiveness.

Now he's had to break him of his high school scorer's mentality that any shot is a good shot, explaining to him that that's not the way it works in the Big Ten.

Muldrew has readjusted and prefers to take chances on the defensive end, maybe too many chances, gambling all the time to steal the ball. Yet right now he has the green light to do it.

"I love his talent, I love his personality," Sprinkle said. "If anything, his competitiveness is on another level."

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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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