UW hoops: Lorenzo Romar previews Arizona, talks rebounding, UW’s 3-0 start, Andrew Andrews, Dejounte Murray and more

Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar met with reporters for about 20 minutes on Tuesday to preview Thursday’s game at Arizona (6 p.m., FOX Sports 1). Many topics were discussed, as usual, and here is everything Romar said.

(How does Allonzo Trier being out change their team?) “Obviously, Allonzo is a bucket-getter, a basket-maker. He kind of I guess adjusted to what they wanted him to adjust to, to where he was playing with a lot of confidence. I know how he is. He can really score the ball, and he was scoring at a high level. He gets to the foul line quite a bit. He had become a guy they were really depending on for offense, so obviously there are some other guys who are going to have to really step up for their team.”

(When was the first time you saw him?) “In this gym, when he was probably in the fourth grade.”

(Did you think at that age he’d be this good?) “He was in our basketball camps. And he would – you’d have to play him up a lot of times, because the kids his age, he was so much better than them, so he’d have to play a few levels up. I asked him if he remembers – he’d come up from behind you and like hit you on the back with the ball, and you’d turn around, ‘come on, little 9-year-old kid,’ and you’d try to take the ball from him, and he’d put it through his legs and have this smile on his face. He always has had a gleam in his eye about the game of basketball, and he’s always been very good.”

(How does it feel to be on top of the conference?) “Like we’ve played three games and we have 15 to go, and like today, we wouldn’t trade it to be 0-3, but there’s just so much time. Two weeks have gone by and there’s nine weeks in conference, so …”

(With no dominant team, does it feel like you guys can win the league this year?) “I don’t know if we can look ahead that far. If we were 10 games in, 12 games in, maybe we could talk about that more. But we’re three games in. I think in 2013 we were 4-0 with three of those wins being on the road to start conference out. I think we lost our next six out of seven or something.”

(What did your early wins over Arizona in 2004-05 do for establishing the program’s reputation?) “For starters, I remember Brandon Roy being recruited by Arizona, saying that I want to come to Washington and play against Arizona and beat Arizona, because I want to play for my hometown. So he had the confidence, he kind of had the chip on his shoulder about Arizona, because at that time, they were the class of the conference, and everyone has always respected Arizona, so the first time we were able to get a win here, our guys never forgot it. Then I think we were able to win at their place that year also, and at that point, you get a win over there, and it was a sweep that first year, that gave our guys a lot of confidence, because of the respect that our guys had for Arizona’s program.”

(Did it start to feel like a rivalry?) “I thought when we had a chance – we were up there near the top, they were either winning it or up there near the top. When both teams had quality players, potential pro players and eventual pro players, those were fun games to watch. You never could predict what was going to happen in those games. Whether it became a rivalry, I don’t know. But I know those were fun games to watch. The Pac-10 tournament back then, I think it was 2005, we played Arizona in the championship and Salim Stoudamire scored 37 points and just put on a show, and there’s just been some epic games over the years.”

(Do you think Will Conroy might talk to these guys about that this week?) “I’m sure he would. He was a part of it. He remembers how much fun they were. I can think of 2011, the championship game, when Isaiah Thomas hit the shot. I think the next year, we won at the buzzer at their place, Tony Wroten blocked a shot right before Nick Johnson put it in, they waved it off. There was a game where Derrick Williams blocked a layup, we had a layup at their place, Derrick Williams blocked the layup (and) they came back to win the game. So there have been some interesting games, some fun games.”

(And the last few years, any common theme there?) “They’ve been better. They’ve just been better. The last few years, Arizona has been one of the top teams in America. So the last few years, we’ve just been outclassed. We weren’t at their level the last few years.”

(Will their size be as big of an issue as it was last year?) “I don’t know. Their front line is very aggressive, and if you go back and watch the USC game, Kaleb Tarczewski just kind of willed his team to victory. He just got offensive rebound putback after offensive rebound putback. Blocked shots. He really imposed his will in that game, and Rustic, who is another 7-footer, if he gets the ball down there 1-on-1 coverage, it’s hard to stop him from scoring. And Ryan Anderson certainly is a very good basketball player. I think their frontcourt’s pretty good. It’ll be a challenge for us.”

(You’d never take a loss rather than a win, but do you think that loss to UC-Santa Barbara helped you guys?) “We’ll see. As of today, maybe if we win that game, we don’t win the UCLA game. But I think it served as a wake-up call for us. I think the Oakland loss, I think we all felt like the guy (Kay) Felder was just really, really good, and wow, he’s just really, really good. The Santa Barbara game, I think our guys realized that even though this wasn’t a school that I was planning on going to out of high school, they’re pretty good. Teams are really good at this level, even if they’re not in the top 25.”

(On four players fouling out at WSU and that still being an issue) “I think we’re getting better. Obviously they fouled out that game. But our guys are getting better at not committing some of the fouls that shouldn’t be committed. We’re still going to foul because we play very aggressively on defense. But we start over. We go back and we continue to just talk about being in good position, don’t get the touch fouls, you’re out of position and you reach anyway. Keep your hands to yourself.”

(How comfortable were you putting Donaven Dorsey in the game in that situation?) “Totally comfortable. Devenir ended up in there also. He played in the game also. Donaven played a full season last year, and with the game the way it was, totally comfortable.”

(Do the fouls far from the basket represent the biggest learning curve?) “Those happen sometimes. We commit fouls sometimes running back on defense and the guard will stop and we run him over. We’re guarding our guy sometimes and then there’s penetration. We go over to help, we pick up a foul that way. We try to front the post and as we’re trying to get around, they hold us off and call a foul on us, they call holding. Little fouls like that.”

(How have you seen Noah Dickerson grow this season?) “Noah has one of the highest basketball IQs on our team. He does a lot of things in the game that don’t quite reach the box score. Against UCLA, he had a huge impact ont hat game and he didn’t make a shot. He played great defense on Tony Parker, and he had 10 rebounds. You can also run offense through him where he can make that pass. He’s a very smart basketball player. He went through a period there where the ball wasn’t going through the basket for him. That’s not uncommon for younger players where that happens. But he is a winner, and I keep saying it, by his own admission, he will tell you without you asking – he won two national championships in high school. He understands what it takes to go out and be successful on the floor. But it just so happened the ball wasn’t going in for him a few times in a few games, and I don’t think that takes away from how smart of a basketball player he is and how much he contributes. He obviously came back and played a very good game in our last game against Washington State.”

(On being such a good offensive rebounding team but not being a very good defensive rebounding team) “It’s crazy. We’re so aggressive on the offensive end, we’re able to get offensive rebounds, but one of the things that I think hurts us – and it’s the tradeoff – we switch almost everything, and when you do that, sometimes you lose sight of who you’re boxing out. I think that hurts us sometimes.”

(On blocking shots and how that impacts rebounding) “The shot-blocking is a byproduct of blow-bys, guys beating us to the rim. So guys beating us to the rim causes rotation, so yeah, a guy coming over to block a shot, now his guy’s left open and we talk about cracking back on the backside to box him out too, but it happens so quickly, sometimes you can’t always get there. one of the best shots to rebound is a drive, because the defense is rotating and you’ve got to pick up somebody right away and make a quick decision, and you don’t always react in time for it.”

(Arizona is one of the best teams in the country at limiting offensive rebounds. Why are they good at that?) “I think they have really good size. I think they’re strong, I think that their defense lends to that because a lot of times they pack it in, so they’re closer to the rim. That’s the other thing with us, with our switching, our big guys are out on the floor a lot of times. The ball goes up and we have smaller guys around the rim, and again, that’s the tradeoff. The flip side of that is we’re forcing over 17 turnovers a game because of the switching. But I think Arizona packs it in and around that rim they do a good job of boxing out because they’re not spread out.”

(On UW’s assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.0) “I think if you look at the assists and turnovers, if you look at that number at face value today, it says one thing. But if you look over the last eight games, I think you’ll see a different number. I think early on, we turned the ball over way too much. And we don’t commit eight turnovers every game, but last game we only committed eight, and I think our turnovers are being slowly cut down as a result of us maturing as a team. We were negative in assist to turnover, but now that’s been flipped around, to where we’re in the positive.”

(How is the team handling the 3-0 start?) “We have to constantly remind them about that, and as we told our team yesterday, the league is going to get better. If we don’t get better, these three wins are just fool’s gold. And there is definitely areas of improvement on our end that we have to get better at. So I think we understand that. I think before conference started, we had a little bit of that feel – that we’re playing at home, we’ll win all these games. But I don’t think we have that now.”

(On Dejounte Murray looking more comfortable recently) “He’s a really good basketball player, Dejounte is, obviously, and sometimes the best ones get it a little quicker. To evaluate a freshman after six, even games, I just think is crazy. You can’t do that. It’s an entirely different level. You’ve got to let them play some games. And some, they’ve got to play half the season before they really start to get it to where they’re more functional. He obviously stands above. I think right now, he’s playing as good as any freshman in the conference and playing better than most in the country. He’s a very good basketball player.”

(On whether it’s rare for a young team to have the kind of character to win close games like they have) “I do think it’s rare. There’s no question this team has a lot of character. I don’t know why this kind of gets lost in this, but we’ve been here like 15-20 minutes, and Andrew Andrews’ name doesn’t come up. Take Andrew Andrews out of this equation and see what happens. And I’ve made mention before – and I’m not comparing our team to the Fab Five at all. I’m not doing that. But, there was a guy named (Eric) Riley that was a 7-footer that played for the Fab Five, and he was a junior or a senior when they were freshmen. There was a guy named Michael Talley who was the starting point guard before they got there. He ended up being a junior. Rob Pelinka. There were some other guys that were upperclassmen that helped those guys. Well, it just so happens Andrew Andrews is the player of the year, in my opinion, if we had to stop today in conference play. And you look at those wins – the other guys did a great job, too, but we can’t leave him out. He’s played a huge part. He just goes and gets that rebound against Washington State, he just goes and gets the rebound against USC, the putback to win the game. Somehow he just comes up with those plays at the end. He’s hit big shots to allow us to win these games. So when we talk about the character, talk about the maturity and all that, it’s all good, but let’s not forget Andrew.”

(Has Andrews surpassed even your own expectations?) “I wouldn’t have guessed he’d have been leading the league in scoring right now. I wouldn’t have guessed that after three games in conference he’d be averaging 29 points a game, and also in the top 10 in assists. He’s having quite a season so far, and we’re at the halfway point and he’s doing this stuff. So it’s not a fluke. It’s kind of what he is at this point, you know? I couldn’t be more proud of him, I’ll tell you that.”

(Are you comfortable with a 7-man rotation going forward?) “I’ve said this before, I don’t pencil in ‘we’re playing seven guys no matter what, we’re playing nine guys no matter what.’ There’s a core right now of seven that play most of the minutes, but that could go to nine next game, that could go to 10. There’s no set number.”

(What determines whether or not you use Dominic Green or Donaven Dorsey in a game?) “It’s kind of a feel. There are some games where the guys that are playing are doing so well you don’t want to disrupt what’s going on. The other thing is, and I’ve said this many times over the years, everybody’s not going to play the whole time, and if guys who weren’t playing were in there instead of the others, the question would be how come those other guys aren’t in? Somebody’s going to come up. I just know both of those guys can help our team and there will be opportunities for them to help our team, because they’re both very good basketball players.”

(On Andrews not trying to do as much by himself lately) “I think that’s probably pretty accurate. We’re talking about growth, so that means everybody has had to grow together, and early on, maybe he felt like he had to run the whole household. He had to keep the house clean. He had to wash the dishes. He had to do everything. But now there are others who have stepped up and are coming alongside to where he just has to worry about competing and leading his team.”

(Was that him figuring it out, or you telling him?) “Little bit of both. Credit the new guys, because they kind of forced themselves to show that, nope, we’re worthy of trust. We’re worthy of your trust. So I think they’ve all worked together in that regard.”

(Did you trust the freshmen when you were a senior?) “We had one freshman, so it was hard, and I thought he was pretty good. Yeah, I trusted him, but we didn’t have seven. But I trusted our freshman. I trusted my teammates. He was on my team, I trust you.”

(On Andrews’ decision to stay for his senior year instead of transfer) “There are some others that in the past in February I thought, when the season’s over, he’s out, because he’s not going to want to come back. We weren’t ready to get rid of him, but you could just tell, ‘I’ve checked out, I’m going to be somewhere else.’ Andrew was frustrated but I never sensed that with Andrew. We never had a conversation where I had to talk him out of leaving or anything like that. We never had that conversation. Yeah, there was interest, but I think it was flattering, and maybe even tempting at some point, but I thought Andrew showed his loyalty and stayed here.”

This story was originally published January 12, 2016 at 4:52 PM with the headline "UW hoops: Lorenzo Romar previews Arizona, talks rebounding, UW’s 3-0 start, Andrew Andrews, Dejounte Murray and more."