“I don’t know what it is about the road, but you do stupid things,” he said bluntly. “You look back and ask, ‘Why did I do that?’ You get caught up in the atmosphere, you forget your principles and you forget to do what you worked on the whole week in practice.”
The Huskies will look to avoid those stupid things today in the Biggest Little City in the World, also known as Reno, when they face the Nevada Wolfpack at 8 p.m. tonight.
Coach Lorenzo Romar could only chuckle when he was relayed Wilcox’s comments. Sure the Huskies were bad in their first and only road loss of the season – a 77-64 defeat to St. Louis that wasn’t as close as the score might indicate. But the opponent also plays a part, and those same Billikens are now 6-1 and ranked in the Top 25.
“Some of it has to do with the team you’re playing against,” Romar said. “But players are a lot more comfortable playing at home.”
Romar being Romar thought of it in nonbasketball terms.
He equated it to his kids asking, “Daddy? Daddy? Daddy?”
“And you yell, ‘What?!’” he explained. “That noise on the road has that effect without you realizing it. It’s just constantly coming at you, and if you’re not used to it, that can get to you. And then the ‘What!?’ response turns into a bad shot that our team normally wouldn’t take or something as simple as forgetting to take the ball out of bounds.”
Romar wasn’t directly discussing the loss to St. Louis, but he might as well have been. And after that loss, his players were greeted with a tougher, stricter Romar. In their most recent game, Romar yanked Wilcox from the game after the first 30 seconds. Aziz N’Diaye was next, 30 seconds later.
Romar was beginning to demand a higher level of accountability for this three-game stretch that starts with Nevada and is followed by games with Marquette and Duke in New York City.
“I think we’ve learned our lesson,” said senior forward Darnell Gant. “I know we won’t come out flat this next game … . I think it’ll be a tough environment. Reno’s a big stadium, it’s going to have a lot of people I’m sure, and I feel like we’re going to be up for the challenge.”
But that doesn’t mean mistakes won’t happen. With five freshman expected to see quality minutes in just the second road game of the season, there will be moments where it might start spinning out of control.
“Strange things happen,” Romar said. “When you’re on the road, sometimes you see things that are uncharacteristic of your team, and right away you go, ‘This is the road.’ That’s why I think veteran teams have much better success on the road, especially early. Been there, done that – it doesn’t faze them.”
Wilcox has been there, done that. His formula is simple to stop the bleeding on the road. It’s not a 3-pointer or a big dunk, which is surprising from the Huskies’ leading scorer at 16.2 points a game.
The tourniquet is defense.
“We have to catch the mistakes early and make sure we get defensive stops,” Wilcox said. “Defensive stops are most important. We stop their runs and it leads to offense.”
The team is so focused on tonight’s game, Romar refused to talk about the games in New York.
“We need to pay attention to what’s going to happen (today),” he said.
Nevada is 4-3 for the season, but Romar still has some concerns.
“They have as talented a starting five as any team we’ve played up to this point,” he said.
The guard tandem of Malik Story and Deonte Burton leads Nevada in scoring and played together for all of last season.
The Wolfpack isn’t really big up front, playing more of a three-guard look with 6-foot-8 Dario Hunt and 6-7 Olek Czyz up front with 6-11 Devonte Elliott coming off the bench. That is a good matchup for the Huskies.
For this UW team, starting off this stretch of three big games on a positive note is key. There are only so many opportunities in the nonconference season to get road experience.
“We have to create our own energy, and we have to play Husky basketball and not get away from that,” Romar said. “We have to continue to rebound the basketball and defend like we know we can defend, share the basketball, and compete. At St. Louis, I didn’t think in the first half that we competed like we should have. You’ve got to credit St. Louis because they played a heck of a game that day and they are playing really good basketball. But I still think we’re a better team than we showed there.”
Ryan Divish: 253-597-8483 ryan.divish@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/uwsports
UW MEN’S BASKETBALL GAMEDAY
WASHINGTON (4-1) AT NEVADA (4-3)
8 p.m., Lawlor Events Center, Reno, Nev.
TV: ESPN2. Radio: 950-AM/102.9-FM
Series: These teams will meet for the eighth time today. Washington leads the series, 6-1, including last year’s 90-60 trouncing at Montlake.
Statistical leaders: For UW – G C.J. Wilcox 16.2 ppg and 4.4 rpg, G Terrence Ross 15.8 ppg and 7.0 rpg. For Nevada – G Malik Story 15.2 ppg and 2.3 rpg, G Deonte Burton 11.0 ppg and 4.4 apg
Scouting report: The Huskies will try this road thing again. Their first road game at Saint Louis didn’t go so well. The team looked out of sync offensively and had myriad defensive breakdowns in a 77-64 loss that wasn’t as close as the score indicates. Of course, Washington had five freshmen playing in their first college road game, so rough spots were expected. But the mistakes were team-wide as Washington could never get out of its own way. Going into Reno and playing a solid Nevada team is just as big a challenge. The Wolfpack is lead by junior Malik Story, a versatile scorer who can beat you in a variety of ways. Point guard Deonte Burton is a solid distributor. Up front, senior Dario Hunt will making the 100th start of his career. Hunt, Burton and Story have started Nevada’s past 39 games together.
Next: 6 p.m. Tuesday, vs. Marquette University, Madison Square Garden, New York
Ryan Divish, staff writer
