UW Men | Ryan Appleby set to break school mark for career 3s

Along with being able to play in front of family and friends, and for the school team he had long followed, what Ryan Appleby also got when he returned home to Washington was the green light.

"He's always had it," said Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar.

Romar says there have maybe been "a couple of times" at the most the past three years when Appleby has taken a shot that made the coach cringe just a bit.

"But he's usually made them," Romar said.

In fact, the senior sharpshooter has made enough that he figures to earn a place in the UW record book this weekend as the school's all-time leader in three-pointers.

Appleby enters Thursday's game against Arizona having made 211 three-pointers, one behind Deon Luton, who played from 1996 to 2000.

"Going in, I didn't ever really think about that or set that as one of my goals," Appleby said. But now that it's near, he says, "It will be pretty cool to have a record by the time I leave."

And that record will be a fitting legacy for a player UW coaches say is as good a shooter as any of them has ever seen.

"There's probably only 10 guys in the country — and I'm being generous saying 10 — that can shoot it as well as he does," said UW assistant coach Cameron Dollar. "So that was something that from day one we were like, 'Man, we've got to make sure that we utilize his strength.' "

Washington has done just that. Few players have made the three-pointer as big a part of their game as has Appleby, who developed an exceptionally quick release during hours of individual training sessions while growing up in Stanwood.

Of the 624 shots he has taken as a Husky, 497 have been three-pointers (79.6 percent). By contrast Luton — who was a 6-foot-4 high-school center before becoming a guard in college — attempted 573 three-pointers out of 1,254 total field goals during his four-year career. After a brief attempt at pro ball following his UW years, Luton returned to his native state and is now a guidance counselor for middle-school students in Oklahoma City.

But while Appleby's role with the Huskies might seem as clearly defined as just about any player's could be, both player and coaches say it wasn't quite as set when he arrived in 2004 after one year at Florida. Appleby averaged nine assists as a senior at Stanwood High and was generally considered one of the top-10 point-guard prospects in the country.

That was also primarily the position he played with the Gators, taking just 14 three-point shots in 183 minutes in 23 games. After making two three-pointers in his first game there, he made only three more the rest of the season.

"He would just pass the ball and run to the other side," Romar said.

Frustrated with that role, Appleby transferred to UW, then developing a reputation as breakneck team under Romar.

Romar says "it wasn't the plan" that Appleby would become primarily a shooter.

"But when we looked at our personnel and we had Nate [Robinson] and Will [Conroy] and Brandon [Roy] and all those guys who could handle the ball, Ryan's niche [became] to kind of hang around and get open shots," Romar said.

Says Appleby: "I wasn't really sure what my role would be when I came here. I was just trying to do whatever I could to fit in, and that's kind of where I fit in, being that shooter. After my [redshirt season] that was kind of the thing that was missing on the team, was a shooter to stretch the defense and keep the defense honest and not let them help off and double-team guys. That's what I brought to the table, so I tried to do it."

He took six shots, all three-pointers — making two — in his first game with the Huskies, and a role was born.

After two seasons where he often got open looks when defenses spent much of their time and energy defending Roy or Jon Brockman or Spencer Hawes, Appleby has been a marked man much of this season, finding out what it's like to deal with double teams. That's led to a few struggles, such as the scoreless trip to Los Angeles when he missed all seven shots he took in two games.

But last Saturday in Corvallis, the Oregon State coaches made a decision on par with some of the ones their players made before the game, deciding to play Appleby straight up. That allowed him to tie a career high with 15 three-point shots, and set a school record by making nine.

Dollar said that game reinforced "how significant it is to have a guy like that on your team that can just go 'kaboom, kaboom, kaboom' and before you can even blink, you take the heart out of a team."

Dollar says his only complaint through the years is that Appleby hasn't shot more.

"I want him to take it even when he isn't open," Dollar says. "I'm like, 'Man, I think he still could have gotten one off there.' "

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com