UW Basketball Team Is at Utah, Badly Needing a Win

The University of Washington men's basketball team will face the Utah Utes in Salt Lake City on Thursday night, praised by some for their scrappy effort at Arizona to begin the week.

The hard truth is this: these Huskies lost by 16 in Tucson, which is a significant margin no matter how effort you put into it.

They fell below .500 through 11 games (5-6 overall, 0-1 Pac-12), which doesn't seem all that bad on the surface, unless you consider the lightweight schedule the UW has played.

Northern Illinois, Northern Arizona, Winthrop, Texas Southern, South Dakota State, Utah Valley and on and on.

Arizona was the only team clearly a notch above the Huskies, sending plenty of talented big men and 3-point shooters at them.

Most disturbing, Mike Hopkins' Huskies have dropped 40 of their past 54 games over three seasons.

Think about that: 14 wins over 24 months.

That's a two-month total for Gonzaga.

Not too many people hang on to their jobs with a success rate like that.

If there is a chance to pull out a win on this three-game UW road trip, this is it. Tipoff is at 6:30 p.m. PT and the game will be shown on Pac-12 Networks.

The Utes (8-6, 1-3) have a new coach and a less talented roster and are bringing up the bottom of the league standings alongside the Huskies.

The UW has the nation's fifth-leading scorer in Terrell Brown, averaging an even 22 points per game, but he doesn't get much help.

Noticeably absent are any post points.

Nate Roberts, the UW's 6-foot-11 junior center, has started all 11 games but he's scored just 39 points this season; zero at Arizona, 2 in the game before that against Utah Valley.

This greatly strains Brown and his fellow perimeter shooters and effectively makes the Huskies just half a team.

Hopkins said he will turn more to 7-foot-5 junior Riley Sorn, who's coming off a back injury and has appeared in the past two outings after missing the first nine. He played 18 minutes at Arizona and had 6 points and 5 rebounds.

With or without Sorn, these Huskies are teetering on having another wasted season, maybe even holding on to their coach. Only positive outcomes will fix that.

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