Quoting Lorenzo Romar on Andrew Andrews, Pac-12 honors, the Pac-12 tournament and more

The Huskies leave on Tuesday for Las Vegas, where they begin the Pac-12 tournament with a noon Wednesday game against Stanford at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. First, UW coach Lorenzo Romar met with reporters on Monday to preview the tournament and react to the Pac-12’s all-conference honors, which were announced earlier in the day.

Here is everything Romar said.

(On UW players getting All-Pac-12 honors) “I thought it was good to see a lot of guys get recognized. Thought … well, it was good to see a lot of guys get recognized. It was good to see that.”

(On if there was any part of the Pac-12 honors he disagreed with) “You just had to go there.”

(It seemed like you wanted to) “I thought Malik Dime had a heck of a year, defensively. I could go on and on, but I’m proud that our guys are recognized in the way that they were. It’s good. Especially with most of these guys being back, I would say for these guys, good start.”

(On thinking before the season that Andrews could be first-team all-league) “I would think that he would think that. He has a lot of confidence in himself. I think he averaged 15 points a game last year. He was one of the leading returning scorers in this league, so he probably thought he’d have a chance to do it.”

(Did you think he would?) “All league? Absolutely. I thought he’d have a chance to do that.”

(On Andrews scoring 47 but not winning player of the week) “(Laughs). He had a great week. Unbelievable week. Gabe York got it? He had a great week, too. Andrew’s performance is the best performance I’ve ever seen in this league since I’ve been here, and that includes Klay Thompson’s 43, whatever he had against us, in the Pac-12 tournament. Salim Stoudamire against us. There have been some special ones. That 47 he put on the opposition was pretty good.”

(On Andrews’ 47-point game against WSU) “He did it all within the flow of the game. I didn’t sense that he went out to score 47. As the game was going on, he had the ball in his hand and he hit a few and got going and got in a zone and just began to rattle them off, possession by possession. That’s what made it so special, so electric.”

(On whether he would have left Andrews in the game to score more, in retrospect) “I took him out with eight minutes to go, because he asked. It might have been the first time in his career he asked to come out. He just said, ‘I’m a little winded, just give me a break here.’ That’s what we did, and we put him back in. my intent was to put him back in, and he did go back in the game.”

(On having a week off between the end of the regular season and the Pac-12 tournament) “I don’t ever remember having that. I believe this is a first. I could be wrong, but I don’t recall that happening.”

(On how he managed the week off) “We wanted to make sure that we did a few things during the week that with a week’s rest and playing back to back, wanted to give them a little bit of a break, which we did, a couple days. But we also wanted to make sure we got a little better, also, maintain our conditioning, those type of things. Today’s practice will probably be a really good one. We’ll get a lot of stuff done today. You have the end of your regular season and then a week before Pac-12 tournament starts, so you’re kind of off just a little bit.”

(On making sure guys don’t wear down late in the season) “I think just body wear and tear, it was great in that regard. I thought we were keeping guys relatively fresh down the stretch. You watch even down the stretch with us cutting practice times back a little bit, guys have pretty good legs with their shot, and you can just see there’s a lot of energy. Like I’ve said before, you can practice a long time, and mentally maybe you’re getting better, but you’re getting drained physically, so it can become counterproductive. We’ve been cutting time down, and now to have a little bit more rest, just the nicks and bruises that you mentioned tend to go away when that happens, so for that reason, it was good.”

(On the team being fresh despite not playing a deep rotation) “We play up to 10 guys. We don’t do that every game, but if a guy is winded or in foul trouble, we’re able to go to our bench and be OK. But in terms of guys being fresh, I think if you look at our teams over the years, this was not a year, this yea rand last year, but a lot of times, our teams get better and stronger as the year goes on. I thought our guys – I’ve said it, the wins didn’t show it – I thought we got better but I also thought we were pretty fresh down the stretch. At the end of games, we’re still able t hit shots, we’re still able to run, those type of things. When I was an assistant for Jim Harrick, we used to do that. Down the stretch, make sure guys that were playing the majority of the minutes we’re drained by the time the season was over. ‘Come on, we’ve got to grind some more, we’ve got to get it right, we’ve got to grind some more!’ You can do that through walk-throughs, you can do that through film, you can do it through breakdowns, but when you’re using their legs all the time, they can get worn down, and like I said, it defeats the purpose.”

(On potentially playing four games in four days) “We’ve done it before. And when it gets to tournament time, there’s a lot of adrenaline going, and there are other teams that are playing every night, too. The four that get byes, they could potentially get three. But still, you’ve got to bounce back. We did that in the Bahamas, I think it was three straight games you had to do it. You try to use timeouts, try to give a guy a blow here and there, depending on the score. It makes it difficult if it’s tight or overtime, but if there’s a way that you can win and give guys rest early, that’s great, also. But everybody, with the exception of those four teams, are going through the same thing.”

(On preparing for Stanford to play the same zone) “You never know. You have to anticipate that teams could possibly do anything in tournament time when they have a couple of days off. Hopefully we’ll be prepared for whatever is thrown at us.”

(On what he likes about the Pac-12 tournament) “Just that high level of competition where you know (it’s) lose or go home. Any time you’re in that situation, you know you’ve got to come with your best every time. That’s kind of a rush, as an athlete, as a coach, to be in that position. That’s when the stakes are at their highest.”

(On whether he’s tweaked UW’s defense in recent games) “Not in general. Whatever we’re doing is kind of in our package. Depending on who we play, we might approach it differently based on the scout and what we think might give us a better chance for that team on that particular day. So you could call it a tweak – I wouldn’t say as much of a tweak as we just go to another part of our defensive package in what we do.”

(On if there is a Pac-12 team he’d like another crack at) “That next one would be great, whatever that one is, because we can’t afford to be choosy right now. ‘Oh, we’re 9-9, but I think we’ll play that team.’ Whoever’s thrown our way, let’s go for it. That’s how you have to approach tournament time.”

(On what they have to do to make the NCAA tournament) “I think that we will do a decent job of guarding. I think it’s going to be important that we make open shots. Make open shots. We don’t have to be in the zone. We don’t have to go off and have guys get 47, but be able to make open shots. Now, that’s given the makeup of our team and after 30-plus games what we’ve been able to do. We’re going to have to try to do a better job of rebounding, obviously. But when you’re playing in these tournament games, as we have seen in conference play, a missed shot here or a made shot there can be the difference, in our case, the difference in being tied for sixth or being in third or fourth place. Can make a big difference, so we’ve got to be able to do that.”

(On how many games they have to win to make the NCAA tournament) “I’d say we probably need to go at least to the championship game.”

(On Andrews having a bullseye on him after scoring 47) “I would think that the teams we played in our league, there’s been a bullseye already on him. I think Andrew has played with a bullseye on his back quite a bit of the season this year. He scored over 30 points a half a dozen or more times, so he hadn’t scored 47, but he’s had games where he’s gone off. So this is not unfamiliar territory with him, where he’s had big games and had to come back and play in the next one. I just think, like I talked before, maybe a month ago, when everyone was concerned about him not making his shots as much, and he was going through that little time that Andrew has gone through that each year and I said when he has broken out of those slumps, he’s come back in a major way, and I think we have seen that. We talk about the 47 is the last thing you remember, but he did get 30 down in Oregon and 20, he averaged 25 on that trip, so he’s starting to play right now. He’s starting to make shots like he did earlier.”

(On re-watching Andrews’ 47-point game from an entertainment standpoint) “I think the last time I watched it, after many times of breaking it down, I was able to watch and enjoy it. Just see the calm on his face. That he knew he was having a good night, but he was just steady with it. He wasn’t overly emotional with it. He wasn’t like, ‘I’ve got to go get my next shot.’ He just was playing in the flow and our guys were getting him the ball, and I noticed how it was senior day and how excited his teammates were for him. They were really fired up for him, to see him do that.”

(On Andrews making teammates better) “He’s the leading scorer in the conference, and he’s had a lot of really good games, and when he comes out, he’s going to go play. He’s going to go compete. But when that ball’s going down for him, I think that helps everyone’s cause, because they know he’s the point guard but he can score, and I think that helps.”

(On doing more defensively because players are more familiar with system now) “There’s no doubt it’s because now we are more familiar with it. All you do is see the games. People don’t see the preparation. People don’t see, OK, when we leave the meeting with our staff, we’re going to defend this this way, we’re going to defend the pick and roll this particular way, and this other set where they get the guy open for the 3, this is how we’re going to defend it, and what we really have found is when we try to get too cute as a coaching staff and over-coach, it’s not good. It’s not good. We learned this with our team. We’ve been trying to keep it simple with our group. And that’s what we’ve done. So lately, we’ve been able to do some of the things we were trying to do earlier, but we weren’t ready to do that yet. So much is habit and repetition. So much of it is. Now, like I said, I just think our guys have a little better feel.”

(On Stanford) “They have a couple guys – (Michael) Humphrey scores within the flow of what they do, he’s a very good basketball player, I think he’s a future all-conference guy in this league. But (Dorian) Pickens and Allen, Rosco, they can get on a roll. If they get in a zone, they can really, really hurt you. I think Pickens had 22 points the next game after us in the first half. Anyone that can do that can really get going, and that can be a problem if those guys get going.”

This story was originally published March 7, 2016 at 3:01 PM with the headline "Quoting Lorenzo Romar on Andrew Andrews, Pac-12 honors, the Pac-12 tournament and more."