Huskies disappointed by loss to Cal, but Lorenzo Romar says he’s encouraged by improvement in several areas (and other Friday quotes)
Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar met with reporters earlier this afternoon to recap Thursday night’s loss to California and preview Saturday’s game against Stanford (5 p.m., Pac-12 Networks). Here’s everything he said, including a note that Malik Dime will remain in the starting lineup in place of Noah Dickerson. Dime made his first career start on Thursday against Cal, the first time in 26 games that UW deviated from its original starting five.
(On reviewing the Cal game) “Thought we played pretty good defense. That jumped out. I thought we made a concerted effort, as a group, to do a better job of boxing out on the backboards. At times, their length allowed them to reach over us and get balls, but for the most part I thought we did a better job. In fact, we had more second-chance points than they did last night. That’s a turnaround from what’s going on. We talked about four things with our team. We talked about better effort on the boards. We talked about keeping people in front of us. We talked about taking care of the basketball and making better decisions. There were a couple of times, a few times that we didn’t make good decisions, but for the most part, I thought we improved in those areas.”
(Was that your best defensive performance this season?) “No, I think Arizona, here, was a really good defensive effort. But last night, we couldn’t complain about our defensive effort. That team, we just watched that team play the last few games. They’re an explosive team. They have some guys that can put the ball in the basket. Made mention last night of the bench – they have two debatable all-conference guys coming off their bench, scoring. Guys that have scored 30 points in college games over a period of time. So they have some guys that are explosive and definitely capable. But I thought we did a good job, collectively, of guarding them.”
(On Matisse Thybulle bouncing back from missed free throw) “We’ve not been in this position with Matisse before, but I would imagine he’s going to put his chinstrap on and find a way to help us. In his mind, he’s thinking, ‘I had an opportunity (and) I’m going to make up for this somehow.’ It’s a shame to look at that with Matisse at the line after he had made his other foul shots. And there were so many other factors in that game that we didn’t capitalize on. We talk about all of the shots that were, in some cases, as easy as his foul shot, that we didn’t convert. We haven’t said anything about those. Just one of those things. He’s not the first one, he’s not the last one who will be in that situation.”
(On Stanford) “They play very hard. They play more of a methodical style. They’re not really getting up and down a lot. Obviously, Rosco Allen is playing very well for them. He’s a senior. He’s on a mission, it seems. But then (Michael) Humphrey is one of the emerging stars in our league, I believe. He does a lot. I think we’re seeing just the beginning of something really special with him as a basketball player.”
(On Johnny Dawkins’ teams) “His teams are usually hard-nosed. They usually get after it and play hard.”
(Does a high-scoring game favor Washington?) “I don’t know. What will favor Washington, in my opinion, is if we come out and do most of the things we did last night. And I say most, because one of the things we did not do was win the game. But I look back and there are other games where we’re all fired up because we won, and maybe we made free throws in the last two minutes, maybe we made eight or nine 3s in that game, and the end result was that we won. Well, the end result (on Thursday) was we lost. So it doesn’t look as good. But I like our chances, anywhere, if we do a lot of the things we did last night.”
(Does defensive focus lead to better offense?) “Usually when you lock in and you’re that focused defensively, it kind of carries over. It’s done that for us earlier in the year. I should say before, in other games. It’s carried over because you’re focused, you’re locked in. so now shots usually go in. Last night, they didn’t. The foul shots. We were shooting 75 percent in conference as a team. We were right up there at the top. They just didn’t go in last night. We just did not shoot the ball well. Around the rim, I do think Cal’s length bothered us a little bit. You look at Cal’s defensive profile, they’re pretty good, defensively. But we still also had a lot of looks that we weren’t able to convert.”
(On analyzing patterns and trends, like losing close games) “There’s no question you try to analyze it. You have to be able to fix it. It’s one thing, obviously to identify the problem. It’s another thing to fix it. … We have seen that there has been a pattern. If we’re down six or seven, we come up and close the gap and get down one or two. If we’re up four or five, we’ve been losing leads, and it’s for the same reasons. At that point, we’ve been not making good decisions. That’s been it. We’ve played good defense only to allow them to get the ball back and score, so that possession we did not get a stop. Those are the things that we have been talking about and we have analyzed it and we’ve worked on it, and I do think, again, the things that I just mentioned to you, you look at how we handled those last night, we did a better job of it. And we put a couple more balls in the basket at the free throw line, like we’ve been doing, if we just shoot our normal percentage from the free throw line, it’s a different discussion today. So I thought we made progress, even though you could argue and say, ‘how’d you make progress? You lost your fourth in a row.’ We made progress. We just didn’t get the win.”
(When you said after you guys started 3-0 that ‘this will be fool’s gold if we don’t improve,’ is this kind of what you had in mind? A losing streak like this where you don’t get over that hump?) “That’s exactly what I was talking about, because even though we were pulling these games out, there would be games when somebody just had a phenomenal night. Andrew would have a phenomenal night, or Dejounte would have a phenomenal night. Or someone else would really step up and we would pull the game out. Our team is so resilient and doesn’t have quit in them that we’d find a way to get it done, but sooner or later, if we weren’t able to knock the foul shots down, if we weren’t able to hit those 3s, if we weren’t able to impose our will and force turnovers, then we weren’t doing the things that were necessary to really win games at a high, high level, and here we go again, back to, our decision-making wasn’t where it needed to be, we were giving up too many blow-bys and not keeping teams off the backboard. So that’s exactly what I was talking about. But again, in spite of a loss, I was encouraged last night, because we went a long way in getting better at some of those deficiencies.”
(On thinking the Pac-12 would be pretty wide open) “I still think that. You look at the positioning in our league, and there’s still one or two games separating everyone. I know it’s only a few weeks left in the league, but one weekend – we see it almost every weekend. One weekend, the deck gets reshuffled. So Arizona seems to have hit a stride and they’re playing really, really well right now. Utah is playing really, really well right now. Cal, Cal’s playing really well. They’re getting a lot done. The team we’re playing tomorrow, Stanford, they beat Oregon. They’re starting to pull out some wins. It’s reshuffling a little bit, and it can reshuffle again.”
(Is tomorrow a must-win game?) “Seems like there have been must-win games forever. I just think what you’re playing for changes every time you drop one. At one point, it was a must-win because we were fighting for a league championship, and you drop one or two, and maybe that is not as much in the picture. So each game is different. But we cannot allow ourselves to focus just on that. We have to focus on, it’s not an option to not improve in those four areas that we’re talking about. It’s not an option to not make good decisions. It’s not an option to let people drive around you to the rim, or to not box out, or to not come up with the ball, because it’s not always just not boxing out. You go for a block – a couple times we got dunks because Cal went for the block and they didn’t get it and we get the dunk. Just not holding onto the basketball, things like that. And then taking care of the basketball. It’s not an option just to throw the ball all around the gym. Those are musts. Those are our musts. That’s how we look at it.”
(Did you get what you wanted out of Malik Dime starting?) “Malik did a fine job. He got winded after a few minutes, but he came out, went 3-for-3, gave us energy. I thought he did a nice job.”
(Will you stay with Dime as a starter?) “Yeah, we’ll go the same way tomorrow. If he would not have picked up his second foul early, he probably could have helped us even more, but we had to sit him down after he picked up his second foul. I thought Noah played well, also, coming off the bench.”
(On Dime giving more energy from the start) “I think the five guys that make you the best team maybe in the beginning, or at the end of the game, the five guys that make the best team, whoever they are, regardless of position, those are the guys you put in there. And he certainly made us pretty good. But you know, there have been games where Noah was starting, many games, especially early on, where as a starter, he made us better. It’s just this time of the year and kind of where we are that we just decided to make a change. And I thought both played well last night.”
(On bench production and whether it’s where it needs to be) “We had been getting that. I thought Noah provided something for us. But we didn’t get as much last night. Our bench has helped us win a lot of games this year. We would anticipate that being the case as we go on.”
(On David Crisp not getting as many minutes recently) “I think Dave right now just (needs) to go back and play like he knows he belongs, like he did earlier in the year. I don’t think – we can look at maybe the ball doesn’t go in the basket, or this guy’s not playing as well as he was early. David hasn’t shot the ball as well, and if you look at our wins and losses, I think David was a big part of what we were doing early, when we were at the top of the league, when we were playing better, or we were winning games. I think David was a big part of that. So he just needs to regain his confidence, and go out there, like I said, like he belongs.”
(On Andrew Andrews needing to carry the team) “Andrew hit two big 3s for us at the end to get the game close. He wasn’t able to knock his shot down as much, but doggone, he really competed last night – on the backboard, defensively. He just really, really competed. I see him looking at this as, this is down the stretch, this is kind of his last hurrah in college. He played that way. He really competed. He played like there was a lot on the line. I was proud of the way he went out and approached that game.”
(On cutting down on turnovers) “We will allow 12 or 13 turnovers, and remember, with turnovers, if you had zero turnovers, and in the last two minutes of the game you turn it over three times, that’s terrible. But the possessions, the number of possessions that we have, the fast pace that we play, (if) we get 12 or 13 turnovers, I’m OK with that. We had seven last night. So I thought our guys did a tremendous job of taking care of the basketball.”
(On shooting early in the shot clock and pushing tempo) “As long as we’re taking good shots. The problem occurs when we rush it up and take early contested shots. That’s a formula for disaster. And that’s one of the things that I was talking about. Decision making. If we’re pushing that ball up and there’s nothing there and we still try to force it, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. But if we can continue to push it up and get great shots before the defense is set up, that’s great.”
(On whether that improved last night) “I thought we did a better job of it, yes. We did a better job of it. We just couldn’t convert.”
(On a common thread in last three losses to Stanford, all last season) “Last year was (Stefan) Nastic, Anthony Brown and Chasson Randle. Phew, glad he’s gone. Those guys were seniors last year. Those guys were all scoring threats. They knew how to play, they knew what was going on. Last year, we had a little tougher year. So I think those guys were better than we were last year.”
This story was originally published February 19, 2016 at 3:02 PM with the headline "Huskies disappointed by loss to Cal, but Lorenzo Romar says he’s encouraged by improvement in several areas (and other Friday quotes)."