Once UW Basketball Season Ends, Coaching Change Appears a Certainty
University of Washington basketball is in a rut. It's been that way for four seasons now, maddeningly so. Small steps forward, big steps back.
The program has been stuck in the Montlake mud throughout Quade Green's season-collapsing ineligibility, the pandemic year of incredibly selfish and overrated Husky players, the over-reliance on the one-man Terrell Brown show to this latest season of one missed opportunity after another.
Record-wise, the Huskies have gone 15-17, 5-21, 17-15 and 13-10.
Just compare the last two UW-Arizona basketball games at Alaska Airlines Arena to understand the lack of progress made.
Twelve months ago, the Huskies led the Wildcats 20-11 before a big crowd of 8,503, quickly had things spiral out of control, trailed by nine at halftime and lost by 24 points.
This past Saturday, the UW once more jumped in front of Arizona by the same 20-11 score before the season's biggest turnout of 9,268, fell behind by two at the break and dropped this one by 23.
Husky coach Mike Hopkins, a basketball cat with six lives, won't survive this.
He has a minimum of nine games left in charge and he's done. You already can see it in his eyes. You can see it increasingly on the fan boards. You'll see it in the headlines in about five weeks.
Hopkins' job has been in serious question since his woeful 2020-21 UW team won just those five games and six guys immediately transferred out, led by me-first shooter Erik Stevenson, now on his fourth college team.
The year before, the coach was hailed for bringing in his first Kentucky transfer in Green and 5-star recruits and future first-rounders in Isaiah Stewart and Jaden McDaniels. Yet eyebrows were significantly raised during that 2019-20 season when the new point guard let his academics slide, was sent to the sidelines and that talent-laden team proceeded to lose 13 of its next 15 outings.
Hopkins' inability to halt that slide brought his coaching skills into question for the first time. Did he really have just one capable point guard on the roster back then? That's a lot like taking off in a commercial jet with only a lone pilot on the flight deck.
After playing and coaching at Syracuse for Jim Boeheim for more than a quarter century, Hopkins came to Seattle with heady credentials and he won right away with mostly inherited players, but won just the same.
He's also one of the more likable and personable coaches found anywhere in college basketball, which has bought him an extra season or two at the UW when others would have been let go, and his good-natured spirit has blunted any overt media criticism of him.
However, Hopkins' major flaw is he never seems to be in control on game day. He's slow to shake things up or slow things down. The details escape him.
He's continually been incapable of calling effective timeouts that work to halt other team's big runs, such as Arizona's 19-1 second-half burst last Saturday.
And every time the ball goes inside to 7-foot-1 Braxton Meah, the Husky big man dribbles it and effectively cancels out his offensive move, which is a coaching thing that Hopkins and his guys should have corrected long ago.
No, it's a little late for any job-saving alterations now. The UW travels this week to face UCLA and USC, teams that beat the Huskies by 25 and 13, respectively, in Seattle. The outlook is a little bleak.
Overall, Hopkins' latest team has suffered through resounding losses this season of 17, 23, 23, 25 and 25 points.
The UW drew big crowds for the Auburn and Arizona games, curious to see if an upset could be pulled, but fans watched as the Huskies faded badly fairly early in both outings.
Mostly, Hopkins hasn't won enough, putting together a 98-85 record in Seattle so far, prevailing 53.6 percent of the time.
The previous five Husky coaches, right or wrong, were fired in Marv Harshman, Andy Russo, Lynn Nance, Bob Bender and Lorenzo Romar.
Hopkins' chances of keeping his UW job for a seventh season appear no better than him guiding this team to an NCAA championship.
Considering what's happened before him, it's tradition. Not a welcome one for Husky basketball, but an unshakeable trend just the same.
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