Skip to main content
Inside The Huskies

NCAA Tournament Drought Continues to Squeeze UW

It's now seven years and counting since the Huskies last advanced.
Dan Raley|
Huskies head coach Danny Sprinkle gestures to his team against Wisconsin.
Huskies head coach Danny Sprinkle gestures to his team against Wisconsin. | David Banks-Imagn Images

In losing to Wisconsin 85-82 on Thursday afternoon in the Big Ten Tournament in Chicago, the University of Washington basketball team once more hit an unwanted and undesirable milestone.

For the seventh consecutive season -- and for the 14th time in 15 years -- the Huskies officially missed out on the NCAA Tournament.

March Madness again turned into March Sadness, if not March Badness.

Over the past decade and a half, the UW each year but once has missed out on every college basketball player's postseason desire, which is to be one of the nation's top 68 teams.

Where it's on to some random opening-round site, which feels magical no matter how many people show up in the stands.

Where the Huskies get covered by some obscure cable channel showing their every move to people in office pools everywhere, which feels great.

When the season began, that was the stated mission for this UW team (16-17 overall, 7-13 Big Ten).

"All of us, we should have a chip on our shoulders to get to the NCAA Tournament," coach Danny Sprinkle said in October. "Our staff and every single one of our players. That's the main goal. We've tried to hit that every day."

The Huskies' most recent NCAA Tournament appearance came on March 24, 2019, when they lost to North Carolina 81-59 at the Columbus Arena in Columbus, Ohio. They advanced after beating Utah State 78-61.

Before that, it was an Isaiah Thomas-led UW team in 2011 advancing to Charlotte, North Carolina, where it beat Georgia 68-65 and lost to North Carolina 86-83.

Even Sprinkle has been to the NCAA Tournament in recent years, multiple times elsewhere, guiding Utah State to the event in 2024 for a win over TCU and a loss to Purdue, and getting Montana State to the Big Dance in 2022 and 2023.

Huskies guard Zoom Diallo (5) shoots and misses against the Wisconsin Badgers during the second half at United Center.
Huskies guard Zoom Diallo (5) shoots and misses against the Wisconsin Badgers during the second half at United Center. | Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

On his current roster, the coach had just three players who had appeared in an NCAA Tournament game elsewhere -- center Franck Kepnang for Oregon, forward Jacob Ognacevic at Lipscomb and guard Desmond Claude at Xavier, with all of those guys out for the season.

While Sprinkle was rewarded with new coaching jobs for his postseason success, a prolonged tournament absence is what cost Lorenzo Romar his Montlake position, as it did Mike Hopkins.

The newest coach, two seasons into this job, is finding out that something angered the basketball gods somewhere along the line and continues to make the UW pay for whatever that transgression was.

"Everybody's goal should be to get to the NCAA tournament," Sprinkle said.

Loading recommendations... Please wait while we load personalized content recommendations

Published | Modified
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.

Home/Basketball