Lorenzo Romar on 2-16 league record: ‘No way I thought that would happen’

Here is everything Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar said after Washington’s 74-58 loss to USC in its regular-season finale at the Galen Center.

(Opening) “Jordan McLaughlin was terrific tonight. He’s been very impressive. He could be maybe the most improved player in this league. You’d say, well, how’s that, he was already doing well last year? But not playing the point like this. Julian Jacobs was here and Jordan kind of played alongside him. But he was a maestro with the basketball and made great decisions and helped them win the game. I thought our guys fought through a lot of adversity, played hard and just couldn’t finish at the end.”

(On trouble scoring in second half) “Well, the last five minutes, we didn’t get stops, the ball just didn’t go in the basket. The first half we were rolling along and then we began to turn it over. That kind of sparked them when we were up and allowed them to come out. Markelle Fultz was already out, and then David Crisp was out 22 minutes of the game due to foul trouble. That made it a little more difficult because you’re now playing without him. So we just didn’t have a lot of ball-handlers out there, even down the stretch.”

(On going to Noah Dickerson early) “Yeah, with Markelle being out, especially, we need to get points from somewhere. Noah has been terrific in our last nine games. Double-double against UCLA and almost had one tonight. Kind of had his way in the paint tonight.”

(On anything they can take from this game going into Pac-12 tournament) “We were on the road playing them without over half the game two of our better guards, and we were able to do a pretty good job. So we have to go back and make the adjustments. But the effort that we had, the way we played, the way we went about our business, we can take that with us and understand we just have to do a better job of finishing.”

(On finishing with a 2-16 league record) “No way I thought that would happen. You start to lose a few and just like when you win a few, get on a roll, and unfortunately, we got on a roll downhill. I don’t think anyone’s proud of it.”

This story was originally published March 4, 2017 at 6:50 PM with the headline "Lorenzo Romar on 2-16 league record: ‘No way I thought that would happen’."