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Inside The Huskies

Mount Si Forward Back From Knee Injury Commits to UW

Lattimore Ford was the No. 1 player in the state when he was bumped and injured on a dunk attempt.
Dan Raley|
Lattimore Ford drives to the basket in 2025.
Lattimore Ford drives to the basket in 2025. | SI

It was almost as if someone had shut off Snoqualmie Falls, to the point the water came out only in drips.

Or the top off Mount Si was blown off, turning the jagged local peak into a pile of crumbling rocks.

Yet in February 2025, the reason for great despair east of Seattle on the edge of the Cascade Mountains was a severe knee injury that brought down Lattimore Ford, the pride of the Mount Si High School basketball team and the state's No. 1 player at the time.

On Friday, the 6-foot-7, 210-pound forward, who returned to play this past January after a near-year long absence, capped off his wieldy recovery by committing to the University of Washington -- becoming the Huskies' first high school pledge during this recruiting cycle.

“I was always believing I was going to come back and be better than ever, stronger than ever," Ford told Varsity Sports writer Todd Milles. "I was going to work harder than anyone else.”

Danny Sprinkle's staff is banking on Ford reclaiming all or most of his skills after he played 13 games this past season and averaged 13.2 points, 7.4 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game for a fourth-place state finisher that went 24-5.

In contrast, the high-flying Ford was averaging 18.2 points, 7.8 rebounds and 5.2 assists in 2025 when he got undercut on a dunk attempt, landed awkwardly, tore his anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee and was done after 23 games.

As Milles later described it, the Mount Si standout split a pair of North Creek defenders on a breakaway, took off at the foul line for a one-handed slam, got bumped in the air and his knee took the brunt of the friction when he landed near the end line.

The injury required total knee reconstructive surgery and concern was registered over whether he would play at a high level again.

"i'm going to be scary when I'm 100 percent," Ford said upon his return.

Ford definitely could use some better luck considering what's happened to him, with both his knee and in his recruitment. He was first offered a UW scholarship by Mike Hopkins' staff on March 5, 2024 -- three days before those coaches were fired.

Two months later, he was re-offered by Sprinkle's recruiters as they settled in. Nearly a year later, he went down in a heap.

Ford holds offers from Oklahoma, Utah State, Washington State, San Diego State, Montana State, Idaho and Seattle University, according to 247Sports, with the knee no doubt having an effect on his number of suitors.

The Huskies now have four portal pick-ups in former Davidson guard Parker Friedrichsen, San Francisco guard Ryan Beasley, Texas Tech forward LeJuan Watts and Gonzaga forward Steele Venters as they rebuild the roster once more.

Again, Venters will enter next season as an eighth-year college player after losing a pair of seasons at Gonzaga to knee and achilles injuries.

The Huskies can only hope to keep all of these guys healthy and out of harm's way.

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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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