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Inside The Huskies

With NCAA Tourney Expanding, When Will It Include UW Again?

The Huskies haven't played in it for seven seasons, and just one time over the past 15.
Dan Raley|
Wesley Yates III shows a little emotion on game night.
Wesley Yates III shows a little emotion on game night. | Dave Sizer photo

On Thursday, the NCAA Tournament received approval to expand from 68 to 76 teams, yet the nagging question persists -- no matter how big this event becomes, what's it going to take for the University of Washington men's basketball team to play in it again?

The Huskies haven't shared in March Madness for seven long seasons now, and only once over the past 15 years. This is an embarrassing development for a UW athletic department that trumpets its teams' postseason achievements from rowing to men's soccer to women's softball.

As coaches Lorenzo Romar, Mike Hopkins and now Danny Sprinkle have found out, you just can't build a basketball program with lasting success without an occasional flirtation with an impossible seeding in some out of the way site.

Yet it sure beats not going year after year after year.

LeJuan Watts (3) plays in the NCAA Tournament for Texas Tech against Alabama in March.
LeJuan Watts (3) plays in the NCAA Tournament for Texas Tech against Alabama in March. | Matt Pendleton-Imagn Images

The Huskies' NCAA track record is so bleak over the past decade and a half that their next-to-last tourney appearance came with Isaiah Thomas as the featured player on the 2011 team -- and he's already enjoyed an extra-long NBA career and been retired for two seasons.

Not only that, 2011 marks the previous time the NCAA Tournament expanded, upping the team total from 65 to 68 teams.

"We should have a chip on our shoulders to get to the NCAA Tournament," Sprinkle said last season. Our staff and every single one of our players."

Those Huskies, of course, finished 16-17 and didn't play beyond the Big Ten Tournament.

Which brings us to this current Husky team, which has just one player -- LeJuan Watts -- among the 10 scholarship recipients either signed or on the way who has appeared in an NCAA Tournament game for anyone.

This past March in Tampa, the 6-foot-8 transfer forward from Texas Tech had 14 points and 6 rebounds in a 91-71 victory over Akron and provided 16 points and 7 rebounds in a 90-65 defeat to Alabama, with both games in Tampa, Florida.


Another UW newcomer in 6-foot-7 forward Steele Venters accompanied Gonzaga to the most recent NCAAs and he shared in all of the festivities, but he sat on the bench and wasn't used in either game by the Bulldogs.

Other than that, none of the Husky returnees in 6-foot-4 junior guard Wesley Yates III, 6-foot-11 center Mady Traore, 6-foot-10 forward Lathan Sommerville, 6-foot-10 forward Nikola Dezepina or 6-foot-5 guard Jasir Rencher has dealt with the NCAA Tourney in any capacity other than turning on their TV sets.

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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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