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So until they do, they are going to be asked about why they don’t.
The Huskies will get the chance tonight when they play their first Pacific-12 Conference road game against the Colorado Buffaloes at the Coors Event Center in Boulder, Colo.
It’s kind of important that UW figures out how to win on the road. Their nonconference road losses have made it almost impossible for the Huskies to earn an at-large berth to the NCAA tournament. They’ll need to win plenty of Pac-12 games away from home to win the regular-season title or at least pad their now deficient résumé.
This isn’t the first Huskies team to struggle on the road. In away games during the last four seasons, the Huskies have been above .500 only once.
What makes it so hard to win away from home?
“When you’re away from home, you don’t have the crowd motivating you,” UW coach Lorenzo Romar said. “We go on these frenzied runs – these spurts – at home. What about when you don’t have those on the road?”
What happens is, the Huskies get tight. The ball movement stops, the quick shots start flying and the defense becomes porous.
Suddenly, that one-point lead has turned into an 11-point deficit and there is no crowd to provide a motivational and emotional bandage to stop the bleeding.
The formula to fix it is ultra-simple.
“Your defense has to carry and sustain you through those times, and you can’t fuel their offense by taking bad, quick shots,” Romar said.
Go back and look at the road losses and there are extended periods where the Huskies didn’t defend, particularly against dribble penetration, while also getting stagnant offensively and settling for long, contested jump shots.
The players say they understand what needs to be done.
“I feel like everybody knows what we have to do on the road,” said senior forward Darnell Gant. “There’s no question. We have got to defend, and certain things we do at home we can’t do on the road.”
It’s just a matter of recognizing early when things are starting to unravel and put a stop to it.
“We need to say something before the coaches do,” Gant said.
But who is the player to do that? In the past, it was guys like Jon Brockman and Isaiah Thomas. This team doesn’t have that one dominant personality, yet.
“I’m not sure that it’s one guy. I think it’s going to be a team effort,” C.J. Wilcox said. “We don’t have anybody like Isaiah, who will get up in your face or anything. We have to do it as a team effort and know when we have to buckle down and play right.”
Wilcox earlier in the season admitted “that you do stupid things on the road.”
But it’s not a matter of being stupid. Teams that win on the road limit mental mistakes such as turnovers and defensive lapses. Defensive breakdowns were prevalent in all of UW’s road losses, with opposing guards breaking them down over and over.
Romar thinks those issues have been fixed. The Huskies’ wins over Oregon State and Oregon this past weekend seem to exemplify that.
“Defensively, we are better than we were the last time before when we were on the road,” Romar said.
The Huskies are going to see good defense. Colorado has held its last two opponents – Utah and New Orleans – under 40 points.
“Defensively, they are very fundamentally sound and solid,” Romar said. “They don’t give you many easy baskets. Like Cal and Stanford, they play defense like that. You aren’t going to get anything cheap and easy.”
Kind of like winning on the road, where nothing is cheap or easy.
“We know what we have to do,” Wilcox said.
Now they just have to do it.
Ryan Divish: 253-597-8483 ryan.divish@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/uwsports
LOST, NOV. 20
at Saint Louis, 77-64
Huskies gameDay
WASHINGTON (8-5 OVERALL, 2-0 PAC-12 CONFERENCE) AT COLORADO (9-4, 1-0)
6 p.m. Coors Events Center, Boulder, Colo.
TV: Root Sports. Radio: 950-AM, 102.9-FM
Series: Tonight’s game will be the 14th meeting between the schools. The Huskies hold a 7-6 advantage. The last meeting came on Jan. 2 of the 1995-96 season, when the Buffaloes visited Seattle and UW prevailed, 76-68. The Huskies are 2-4 in games against Colorado in Boulder.
PROBABLE STARTERS
Washington
NamePos.PPGRPGAPGFG%FT%
Abdul GaddyG9.42.55.144.4 63.6
Terrence RossG14.45.91.845.882.1
Tony WrotenG16.84.83.450.052.8
Darnell Gant F 8.25.00.854.173.1
Aziz N’DiayeC7.88.20.551.434.5
COLORADO
NamePos.PPGRPGAPGFG%FT%
Nate TomlinsonG5.62.03.533.865.2
Spencer DinwiddieG11.54.01.545.283.6
Carlon BrownG12.83.22.550.076.5
Austin DufaultF10.34.81.249.065.8
Andre RobersonF12.112.00.950.067.1
Scouting report: The Huskies venture into Boulder in search of their first win away from Montlake this season. It won’t be easy. Colorado is off to a solid start under second-year coach Tad Boyle. The Buffaloes are stingy defensively. In their past two games – wins over New Orleans and Utah – CU held both teams under 40 points. Opponents are averaging 61.1 points a game. Teams are shooting a Pac-12-low 39 percent against the Buffaloes. Thanks to tenacious forward Andre Roberson, who is averaging 12 rebounds a game, the Buffs lead the Pac-12 in defensive rebounding at 27.2 per game and rebounding margin at plus-7.7. Roberson has drawn comparisons to Dennis Rodman. But unlike Rodman, Roberson can do a few things offensively inside, and is averaging 12 points a game. Utah transfer Carlon Brown leads the balanced CU attack with 12.8 points a game, and has taken more shots than any other player on the team. Freshman guard Spencer Dinwiddie is averaging 11.5 points a game and has shown a knack for making big shots – particularly from 3-point range, where he is shooting more than 50 percent. The Huskies will continue to bring C.J. Wilcox off the bench. The sophomore shooter hasn’t slowed down since being moved to sixth man, and is still playing just as many minutes. Freshman guard Tony Wroten’s solid play this past weekend earned him Pac-12 player of the week honors.
Next: 11 a.m. Saturday at Utah, Jon M. Huntsman Center, Salt Lake City
Ryan Divish, staff writer
