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Inside The Huskies

Tougher Together? Remnants of UW Basketball Team Enter Offseason Workouts

The Huskies need a ton of new players and certainly a new slogan as they begin the rebuild.
Dan Raley|
Tougher Together? Remnants of UW Basketball Team Enter Offseason Workouts
Tougher Together? Remnants of UW Basketball Team Enter Offseason Workouts

The University of Washington basketball team began offseason workouts last week and tweeted out the moment.

The irony was a tad too much to pass up.

The message: First day back. Ready to work.

Hashtag #tougher together.

Nothing about that posting was accurate, only uncomfortable.

Coming out of an absolute disaster of a 5-21 season, the Huskies may just as well have headed over to the Intramural Building next door and stood in line for some pick-up games.

Except they wore yellow T-shirts that said, "No fake gym rats."

Only four players who played any significant minutes for Mike Hopkins' fourth team in Montlake remain on the roster.

It's hard to get much of anything done with that.

The UW desperately needs new players, not training sessions primarily for walk-ons.

The person chronicling the moment had to strain to find recognizable Huskies to photograph.

Oh, Jamal Bey and Nate Roberts showed up together, both returning starters, looking in good humor, which was encouraging. Riley Sorn, all 88 inches of him, turned up seated in the background.

Assistant coach Will Conroy and Hopkins were nowhere to be seen in the images, which is probably a good thing. 

Somebody has to be out recruiting.

It's a big job right now.

An onerous responsibility.

Considering that this team lost 21 of 26 games last season, and most of them by wide margins, and that six players entered the transfer portal — with the pathway for a seventh, point guard Quade Green, to be determined — this group is badly in need of a new slogan.

Tougher together doesn't work.

How about starting over?

Making introductions?

Hoping for the best?

Follow Dan Raley of Husky Maven on Twitter: @DanRaley1 and @HuskyMaven

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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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