UW Men's Basketball | Huskies look for right mix with guards

There's an old football axiom: "When you have two quarterbacks, you don't really have one."

In the curious case of the Washington men's basketball team, the Huskies have three players who share point-guard duties, which might suggest they don't have a true playmaker to direct an offense that's averaging 20.5 turnovers after a pair of games against nonconference opponents.

Coach Lorenzo Romar, however, doesn't buy into the belief that you have to have a prototype pass-first point guard to be successful, which might explain why he's paired senior Justin Dentmon and freshman Isaiah Thomas as starters in the backcourt, even though they share a shoot-first mentality.

"If you play with one guard that wasn't a pure point guard and everyone else was more a wing type I think now you got problems," Romar said. "But when you play with two, even though they weren't pure point guards, I think you can still do just fine and play off of each other."

It can be an uneasy alliance and a test of solidarity at times.

In the season-opening loss at Portland, UW finished with just 13 assists in an 80-74 defeat. No Husky had more than three and tensions simmered.

"In the first game, we came apart a little bit, which we shouldn't have," Dentmon said. "But we stayed together. Our team bonded and our trust bonded."

Tuesday's 78-63 win against Cleveland State calmed fears for a couple of days, but several questions regarding who's in charge of the offense still remain before the UW faces Florida International in a regional matchup of the CBE Classic tonight at Edmundson Pavilion.

Dentmon and Thomas agree that Venoy Overton is the purest point guard on the roster. However, Overton, a 5-foot-11 sophomore who started in place of Thomas on Tuesday because of disciplinary reasons, will likely come off the bench.

After two games, Dentmon is shooting 8 for 20 from the field with 24 points, five assists and eight turnovers. Thomas is 6 for 20 with 18 points, seven assists and five turnovers. Overton is 2 for 7 with 10 points, four assists and five turnovers.

Thomas is perhaps the UW's most dynamic and explosive player, but Dentmon might be the linchpin in the three-guard rotation. Romar said Dentmon still is making the switch from shooting guard to point guard.

"I can't think of a more difficult transition," the UW coach said. "It would be like taking a wide receiver and making him a quarterback.

"This year, we've got several guys that can bring the ball up. So it's not as essential that he is stellar at it than we needed him to be for two years. His freshman year, Brandon [Roy] could bring the ball up, so it wasn't essential for him to totally get it. The last two years, we probably counted on him more to do that. But this year, we don't have to count on him as much."

Before Wednesday's practice, Romar said the pecking order is unsettled and roles are still undefined.

It's obvious that All-America candidate Jon Brockman, who is averaging 26.5 points, and junior forward Quincy Pondexter, who scored 15 in the last game, will be two of Washington's top scorers in most games. It's unclear who the third scorer will be or who will lead the team in assists.

Conceivably Dentmon or Thomas would fill one of those roles, however, Romar is hesitant to force a square peg into round hole, perhaps haunted by the failed attempt to move Nate Robinson to point guard years ago.

"We played him at the point and said it's on your shoulders," Romar said. "Twenty-seven percent more turnovers than assists was the result of that experiment. So then we said, 'All right, experiment over. Just go play.' "

Still, Robinson, who plays with the New York Knicks, thrived because Will Conroy abandoned his aspirations to become a scorer and ran the offense.

"I would tell Justin that for him to achieve his goals, sometimes you have to sacrifice and do what's best for the team," said Conroy, the UW's all-time assists leader who is playing with the NBDL's Albuquerque Thunderbirds. "If your team wins, then that's a reflection on you."

Said Dentmon: "It's kind of hard. Once you're a scorer you always rely on yourself to score. Now I have to change and trust everybody else to be in the right spot. It's all about trust. You've got to trust your teammates more and rely on them to trust you.

"I find myself trusting them more. I find myself seeing us coming together more.

Notes

• The Huskies will be one of eight teams in the Maui Invitational in 2010. The other teams will be Connecticut, Kentucky, Michigan State, Oklahoma, Virginia, Wichita State and host Chaminade University of Honolulu.

Percy Allen: 206-464-2278 or pallen@seattletimes.com. Times staff reporter Bob Condotta contributed to this article.