Justin Dentmon's best is plenty good enough

Justin Dentmon has been seeing this game in his dreams.

Seriously.

He has been dreaming of afternoons like this one, where the ball was always in his hands and every important shot was falling, soft as cotton, and the shower of love rained loud and insistent from the highest purple seats inside Hec Ed.

He has been dreaming of games like Sunday's 20-point effort against UCLA, because he knew those games were inside him, trapped in his subconscious, waiting to come out.

"It was a sign for me to start believing in myself," Dentmon said of the dreams. "I haven't had these dreams before. But they've just been constant, like every night. It's been weird."

In the dreams, Dentmon was, well, Justin Dentmon. He was the Washington point guard playing with the same fearlessness he had as a freshman. He was assertive, heroically making game-breaking shots.

In his dreams, he's playing with confidence again.

"I feel like I've been letting my teammates down by not being aggressive enough," Dentmon said after Washington's 71-61 upset win. "I don't know, I've just been out of it. I'm just trying to show them that I can pick it up. I tried my best tonight."

Against the nation's fifth-ranked team, Dentmon found fissures that got him inside the paint. Like a point guard-explorer, he poked and probed, herky-jerky, and discovered paths to the basket that shouldn't have been there.

He scored eight points in the final seven minutes. He ran to the basketball and drove hard to the rim. Dentmon reminded a team that had forgotten how to win, a team that had lost four conference games in a row, what it took to beat the best.

"He set the tone in practice this week," said Jon Brockman, who had 17 rebounds and 12 points. "He just worked his butt off. He just came out and he played in practice just like he played in this game.

"J.D., he was everywhere tonight. And tonight he just got in a rhythm. He did a great job of not only scoring and making big plays on the offensive end, but he did an unbelievable job of guarding Darren [Collison] on the defensive end."

He was the best point guard on the floor.

This was the way Dentmon played two years ago, when he made pressure-defying shots in the NCAA tournament against Illinois. When he played so well and so fiercely, he fit like the logical successor to Will Conroy.

But for the past couple of years, Dentmon has been listening to almost everyone in HuskyWorld tell him what he couldn't do and what he wasn't doing.

After an erratic sophomore year, he lost his starting job this season, to freshman point guard Venoy Overton. Dentmon was averaging eight points a game through 23 games and was shooting 42 percent.

"That's been on my mind a lot," Dentmon said about losing his starting job. "I talk to my mom and my guardian about it every day. They tell me to stay focused, stay humble, stay coachable.

"I'm really just trying to be a coachable player. Whatever you want me to do, come off the bench — and I'll be that kind of player. If you want me to start, I'll do that, too."

Dentmon entered 57 seconds into the game after coach Lorenzo Romar yanked Overton for jogging back on defense after committing a turnover.

"When he came into the game, I thought he was sharp," Romar said.

The college experience is supposed to be about more than wins and losses. In the superheated atmosphere of a big-time game, we all, sometimes, lose track of that.

Players grow up in college, and the good ones persevere through the inevitable disappointments.

Dentmon has persevered.

"Sure, it's been frustrating for me. It's frustrating for him," Romar said of Dentmon's inconsistencies. "It's all part of working through things, though. As frustrated as I get, I'm not one to emotionally throw someone under the bus.

"Obviously Justin Dentmon played exceptional basketball today. He played with a lot of confidence from the moment he entered the game."

Against UCLA, the Huskies played the way they had to play. They were the aggressors. They took the ball hard to the basket knowing they were going to get whacked.

They were ready for a brawl, ready for a smackdown Sunday afternoon. They played the way Romar expects his teams to play.

"It all comes back to mental toughness," Dentmon said. "What you saw on the court today was us fighting for each other. We knew we had each other's backs."

And it wasn't a dream.

A team that had lost the knack for winning found itself again. And, as it should be, Justin Dentmon, the veteran of so many important games, was their leader.

Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com