Lorenzo Romar after 77-66 loss at Arizona: ‘I thought we played the right way’

Here is everything Huskies men’s basketball coach Lorenzo Romar said after Washington’s 77-66 loss to No. 7 Arizona on Sunday afternoon at the McKale Center.

(Opening) “I don’t know how you guys feel here in Tucson about your team, but it’s an awfully good basketball team. I said coming into the game, they do a great job of defending. They make it hard on you to score. Offensively, they have a lot of stars on that team, a lot of talent, but you see them sharing the ball. Coach Miller and that staff get that team, with the one and done era going and all of that, they play together, they play defense the way they do. They’re doing a heck of a job. I was proud of our guys. I thought our guys came into this environment and I thought we played the right way. You pretty much have to play close to error-free basketball to beat Arizona here, and we didn’t quite do that today, and that was the difference in the game.”

(On Arizona’s defense) “They play great position defense. Usually make you shoot over the top of them. Good position the entire time. It’s hard to find them out of position.”

(On what allowed UW to get out to a 9-point lead in the first half) “I thought defensively is what helped us. I thought our defense helped our offense. We didn’t give them a lot of wide-open looks in the first half. Second half we broke down. They’re a good team and it happened. But the combination of that, and then offensively, I thought we were extremely patient. We knew going into the game if we just came down against this team and tried to do something first side, No. 1, nothing was going to be there, but that was going to be a shot that was going to lead to a fast break. I thought our guys did a great job of not doing that. It helped us build a little bit of a lead.”

(Do anything different in the zone?) “Worked harder at it. We’ve been playing the zone here and there a little bit more. I think maybe we’re just getting a little better at it.”

(On what Arizona did better offensively in the second half) “Shots they didn’t hit in the first half, they started to hit, but I didn’t think we worked as hard in the zone in the second half as we did in the first half. They set ball screens, we were getting through the ball screens in the first half. Second half, not as well. And they were able to convert on opportunities.”

(On Arizona maybe wearing them down) “They keep coming at you. They’re not swinging for the fence every time they come down the floor. … Singles and doubles, singles and doubles. … To me, they’re a percentage-based team. They play on the percentages. And it’s like arm wrestling til someone gives in, and they don’t. That’s what happened tonight.”

(On Arizona freshman Lauri Markkanen) “Their freshmen are good, but him in particular, there’s no one in college basketball like him, with that package. He’s very gifted.”

(What makes him so good?) “Just his poise, his playing purposeful basketball. He knows where he’s good, he knows where you can’t stop him. He just kind of gets to those spots.”

(On Markelle Fultz’s game) “I thought he competed. I thought for Markelle going to the rim, there were some shots he usually finishes, doesn’t go down. If he’s able to convert his free throws, he’s up there at 20-plus again.”

(On Fultz’s evolution this season) “He’s been learning. I think back to our Stanford game on the road about five games ago, you could see that he elevated his play. he was already doing well, but then boy, there’s something different, he’s even better right now. I think he’s handled it well. Because of his versatility, he can handle changing defenses and different looks, because he’s not one dimensional. He’s been shooting over 40 percent from 3. He wasn’t able to knock a 3 down tonight, but normally he’s pretty steady at that. His versatility allows him to play through scouts and different defenses.”

(On his communication skills being an asset) “It definitely is. He has a high, high basketball IQ. He understands what’s going on. He’s able to verbalize that and talk. It does nothing but help our team.”

(How concerning has the free-throw shooting been lately?) “It’s concerning because it’s a pattern, and last four games, four or five games, we’ve been 50 percent, 60 percent from the line. In this environment here, we knock our free throws down, it’s close. I’m not going to say we win the game, but you can’t afford to miss that many free throws and expect to come out on top most of the time.”

(On Fultz not distributing as well against elite teams, with only 3 assists today) “We’ve played other elite teams. Oregon’s in our league. We consider Utah to be really good. We’ve played other good teams. Sometimes that has to do with the ball just not going in the basket.”

(On playing a Wednesday-Sunday road trip) “It’ll be interesting to see how many teams have to do it. I think everybody probably has to do it at some point. I don’t think it affected us today. I was concerned, but I thought we came out and played well.”

(On this being a step forward despite the loss) “No doubt. Another thing we told our team is, we made progress, but we can’t take two steps back next time. We’ve got to build on this. Even though we didn’t win the game, we played right.”

This story was originally published January 29, 2017 at 3:26 PM with the headline "Lorenzo Romar after 77-66 loss at Arizona: ‘I thought we played the right way’."