Inside The Huskies

Travel-Tested Huskies Host Hawkeyes At Home

The UW basketball team has been diverted twice in its past two road trips.
Dan Raley|
Quimari Peterson disembarks from a bus on the recent road trip.
Quimari Peterson disembarks from a bus on the recent road trip. | UW

The University of Washington basketball team will entertain Iowa on Wednesday night and, hopefully for the Huskies' sake, they won't have any trouble getting to Alaska Airlines Arena for the Big Ten Conference match-up.

Lately, Danny Sprinkle's guys have had an incredible amount of difficulty traveling to where they need to go.

Two weeks ago, the Huskies got dumped in Missoula, Montana -- which was Sprinkle's rival college town when he was at Montana State -- on the way back from a game at Nebraska.

This past weekend, they woke up on a chartered flight that was diverted to Portland while trying to return home from a game at Northwestern and the Chicago area.

It's been nothing but Planes, Trains and Automobiles for the Huskies.

"We were all kind of sleeping at the end and we land and [the pilot] walks out and says, 'I've got some bad news, we're in Portland,' " Sprinkle said. "What are you talking about?'"

The Huskies, who alternate flying commercial and privately on road trips, were diverted to Oregon for some unknown reason, presumably weather.

It was so late at the time, arrangements were made for them to stay in an airport-area hotel. They next chartered a bus to transport them to Seattle and got home at 5 or 6 p.m. on a Sunday night. The pilots were required to adhere to a 10-hour rest gap.

Returning from Nebraska, the Huskies were diverted on a charter flight to Missoula, landing at 2:30 a.m. on a Thursday. The team sat on the airfield for another two hours before disembarking the plane and checking into a hotel.

They got on a series of Alaska Airlines flights and got home about 7 p.m. that night, according to Sprinkle.

Lathan Sommerville, Quimari Peterson and Bryson Tucker prepare to board a bus on last week's road trip to Illinois.
Lathan Sommerville, Quimari Peterson and Bryson Tucker prepare to board a bus on last week's road trip to Illinois. | UW

Such are the travel travails for a Husky basketball team trying to navigate a Big Ten schedule through the middle of winter, leaving those guys open to all kinds of travel disruptions and sleep deprivation.

So now the UW hosts Iowa three days following their latest cross country sojourn, with these Huskies not faulted if they still look a little bleary eyed.

A large crowd should be on hand for Wednesday's game matching the Huskies (12-10 overall, 4-7 Big Ten) and the Hawkeyes (16-5, 6-4), re-energizing everyone involved.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Published
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