Inside The Huskies

UW's Steinbach on Watch List for Top NCAA Player Accolade

The Husky freshman is one of 30 singled out for Lute Olson Award consideration.
Dan Raley|
Hannes Steinbach shares in a Husky timeout.
Hannes Steinbach shares in a Husky timeout. | Dave Sizer photo

Hannes Steinbach, just nine games into his University of Washington basketball career, is among 30 candidates who have been named to the watch list for the Lute Olson Award, which annually goes to the top NCAA Division 1 player.

The 6-foot-11 freshman from Wurzburg, Germany, is off to a highly productive start, averaging 17.9 points, 12.1 rebounds and 2.1 assists for the 8-4 Huskies.

If he were still alive, Olson, the Arizona coach for 25 years, would have done everything in his power to convince Steinbach to play for his Wildcats, not the Huskies.

After all, Olson, a Hall of Fame coach who died in Tucson in 2020 at age 85, nearly persuaded the great Brandon Roy to sign with Arizona rather than Washington before Roy decided his Seattle hometown connection better suited him when he played in 2003-06.

Hannes Steinbach tosses one in from the key against San Diego.
Hannes Steinbach tosses one in from the key against San Diego. | Dave Sizer photo

Steinbach, with his complete game and desire to be a great one, resembles an Olson kind of player, so selfless and fundamentally sound yet interested in being fully developed by the Huskies' Danny Sprinkle and staff.

Olson won 781 of 1,061 games at Arizona, topped by the 1997 NCAA national championship.

Steinbach, who missed three games with an ankle injury, entered Monday night's game as one of 20 players nationwide with six or more double-double outings this season and proceeded to pick up a seventh with 21 points and 14 rebounds in the UW's 86-56 victory over San Diego.

The young big man is bidding to become the ninth different Husky to average a double-double in a season, but the first to do it as a freshman. Just two UW players have pulled this feat as sophomores, Steve Hawes in 1970 with 20.2 points and 10.2 rebounds and Doug Smart in 1957 with 19 points and 12. 7 rebounds each outing.

Former UW forward Jon Brockman was the last player in Montlake to ring up these sort of numbers, averaging 11.5 points and 14.9 rebounds per outing as a senior in 2009.

Steinbach is one of eight Big Ten players to emerge on the Olson watch list, with others in USC’s Chad Baker-Mazara, Michigan State’s Jeremy Fears Jr., Purdue’s Trey Kaufman-Renn and Braeden Smith, Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg, Northwestern’s Nick Martinelli and Ohio State’s Bruce Thornton.

The Huskies are off through the Christmas holiday and then return on Monday to host the Utah Utes in their final non-conference outing before jumping into Big Ten play against the Indiana Hoosiers on Jan. 4 in Bloomington, Indiana.

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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.

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