Some Random Thoughts on the Husky Basketball Coaching Search
For a week and a half now since firing Mike Hopkins, the University of Washington has been pursuing and accepting applicants for a new men's basketball coach.
For those standing in line for a chance at this opportunity — likely the Danny Sprinkles, the Leon Rices and the Kyle Smiths among them — they need to understand the following obstacles before one of them takes over Hopkins' office looking out on Montlake Boulevard.
This has been a program badly neglected in the face of the UW's football-first mentality. This is a Husky sport never given the proper resources to succeed and consequently it doesn't have a long-standing history of success.
On Sunday, the Montlake campus was deathly quiet as teams all across the country banded together, sat in front of big screens and were shown joyously celebrating their coveted NCAA Tournament berths.
The Huskies have been to just one tourney since 2011, when the team was built around the incomparable Isaiah Thomas, who sent them to the postseason that year with a buzzer-beating jumper against Arizona to win the Pac-12 Tournament. That was so long ago, Thomas' number is retired and hanging from the rafters, and he's now attempting an NBA comeback considered quaint and endearing because he's so old — 35 — in basketball years.
This new Husky coach, whoever that is, needs to know right off this is a job that likely won't end well.
Hopkins became the sixth consecutive UW basketball leader to be fired, joining Marv Harshman, Andy Russo, Lynn Nance, Bob Bender and Lorenzo Romar, in that order. Nance and Romar were former players and even that loyalty to their alma mater couldn't assure them that they would leave the school a second time on their own terms.
Program success has been so hard to maintain that after Tippy Dye coached the UW to its only Final Four appearance in 1953, the Huskies didn't go to another NCAA Tournament for 22 years.
The school recently announced plans to begin construction on a new basketball practice facility, which sounds like a step in the right direction. Except its basketball teams still have to play their games at antiquated Alaska Airlines Arena.
Originally christened Hec Edmundson — after yet another Husky basketball coach who was forced out — the place has been remodeled a couple of times but it's still 97 years old in its framework.
Where you might think Hec Ed nee Alaska Airlines Arena is just fine the way it is, prospective players, those high-end recruits who come to town for a visit, all wanting to be impressed, probably look at it and see a school that doesn't care about college basketball.
New Husky athletic director Troy Dannen, when he was hired in October, described Seattle as a basketball city with a bonafide hoop history. He should know. He grew up in Iowa as a "Downtown" Freddie Brown and Seattle Sonics fan.
Big crowds still come out for Husky games when teams such as UCLA, Gonzaga and Washington State are the opponents. Yes, the locals care about the game.
As the UW tries to find the right coach to replace Hopkins, it might consider taking that practice facility money and building a new arena.
It needs to convince Sprinkle, Smith or whoever Dannen hires that the school is finally serious about supporting a soon to be Big Ten basketball program. If not, it will suffer endlessly in a much more physical Big Ten.
And, the UW might want to add, make that promise, maybe even put it all in writing, that it's determined it won't have to fire a seventh consecutive Husky basketball coach.
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