No Avoiding It: UW Mailed It In Against Penn State

This past week, Danny Sprinkle was asked about the disappointment surrounding his University of Washington basketball players and how these guys were dealing with a season that had fallen apart on them.

Leading up to Wednesday night's match-up against Penn State, a last-place Big Ten team, the Husky coach pointed out the positives for his guys, that they hadn't reached a certain level of despair, that they were still together, that they still cared.

"A lot of teams playing the schedule we did and playing on the road and dealing with some of the factors we've had to deal with, they'd shut it down," he said.

"You've seen teams around the country and a lot of them are already disbanded, they're selfish, they're not playing for each other, they're not connected and they'll go this way."

He closed that thought by making a dive-bombing motion with his right hand.

Well, against the Nittany Lions, his UW players, almost to a man, mailed it in.

In falling below .500 for the first time this season, the Huskies (12-13 overall, 4-10) looked about as disjointed and distracted as they have all season.

From the opening tip, it was hard to watch.

Two bad teams playing each other.

Wesley Yates III falls down and then throws the ball out of bounds. | Dave Sizer photo

Knowing that whoever lost this one, it was really going to be hard to overcome this juncture of the season.

That would be Washington.

Sprinkle's team came up on the short end of a 63-60 defeat at Alaska Airlines Arena that began with an arena two-thirds full and ended with barely half of the crowd sticking around to even watch the final seconds play out with the outcome in question.

With six regular-season games left, including three at home, the Huskies are in danger of watching their supporters really fall off, with having an empty gym on Saturday night against Minnesota.

Most of the fans had to exit Montlake on Wednesday feeling like this team has given in to the losing, the injuries and its inability to shoot from long range, not unlike Sprinkle had described of those others dealing with a similar situation.

Danny Sprinkle and Zoom Diallo confer during the Penn State game. | Dave Sizer photo

This game was so painful to watch, with these players so out of touch with any sort of team play and absentmindedly throwing away the basketball, with them de-emphasizing rather than emphasizing the presence of freshman standout Hannes Steinbach.

Sprinkle needs to do something to reclaim any positive vibe, maybe start four new players to go with Steinbach just to shake things up, then let the others enter the game. It's all for pride and the future now. There's a lot riding on the end of this season.

With such a bad loss, the coach is in danger of losing the fans, some of his younger players once the season ends, any momentum that had been carefully crafted since last year's last-place UW finish.

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