UW men's basketball traveling familiar road

PULLMAN — With the largest Washington State crowd in 24 years hooting in its ear every last second, it was hard to imagine a worse day in recent history for the Washington men's basketball team.

But after the 75-47 demolition by the Cougars ended Saturday, Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar thought of a couple.

"At home against Gonzaga where we missed 22 straight shots, at Wyoming being down [49-19 at halftime], those were worse," Romar said.

But each of those games came early in the 2003-2004 season, before the Huskies began their turnaround from an 0-5 Pac-10 conference start to the NCAA tournament. Then came two of the most highly touted recruiting classes in school history, supposedly ensuring such depths would never be plumbed again.

But this season's 1-6 Pac-10 start means that all assumptions about this team are off, specifically the NCAA tournament bid that seemed all but a given three weeks ago.

The Huskies are 11-7 overall, but have just two quality wins to their name, nonconference victories at home over Louisiana State and Northern Iowa.

In more bad news for UW, that win over LSU looks a little less impressive with every Tigers loss, the latest a 72-52 thrashing Saturday at the hands of Arkansas. In fact, Northern Iowa now has the highest Ratings Percentage Index — a formula used to seed teams for the NCAA tournament — of any team UW has beaten at 47, with LSU falling to 52 (Washington is at 84).

Simply reaching .500 in conference play, which would seem the bare minimum for NCAA consideration, means Washington has to go 8-3 the rest of the way. The Huskies also have a game at Pittsburgh on Feb. 17, which looms as a must-win, as well.

Romar, echoing the defiant tone of some of his players, said he wasn't counting his team out.

"I have the same concerns [as before the game] — that we finally get it going," Romar said. "When are we going to get it? I think when we do get it and experience some success, I don't think we will look back. It's been five of seven on the road [to open Pac-10 play]. Now we'll see what happens with five of seven at home."

That stretch begins with Thursday's game against Oregon, which must play without leading scorer and senior guard Aaron Brooks, who will serve a suspension for his hit on UW's Ryan Appleby in last year's Pac-10 tournament. Then come winnable games against Oregon State and at Arizona State, giving UW what might be its last opportunity to turn its season around.

Certainly, the Huskies can point to the absence of Spencer Hawes against WSU as a big reason for their feeble play. Hawes, who sprained an ankle in practice Friday, is expected back this week.

Still, the offense had no answers for WSU's swarming defense, with players often left trying to create on their own and usually unable to do so.

Three UW starters — Artem Wallace, Phil Nelson and Adrian Oliver — went scoreless. Nelson, thrust into the starting lineup five games ago, hasn't scored a point in his past two. So it's possible Romar will again alter the lineup, maybe reinserting Quincy Pondexter, the lone Husky who showed much life Saturday.

It's tempting to think the Huskies are struggling to adapt to a new style with Hawes and Jon Brockman as the focus. But as Brockman pointed out, this group of players hasn't played together enough to really have a style.

Undoubtedly, the Huskies figure to make some changes to what they are doing, possibly going to even more of a slowdown style to better fit the talents of Brockman and Hawes.

Romar's bigger concern right now is that the Huskies don't lose faith.

Brockman insisted that won't happen.

"If you turn negative and start going different directions, that's when the whole thing collapses," Brockman said. "We are not going to do that, and we have not done that."

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com. Read his blogs on Washington football and basketball at www.seattletimes.com/huskies.