Washington Huskies: Lorenzo Romar Weary Despite Winning Start

Lorenzo Romar Won’t Forget Last Season, Despite Washington Huskies’ 2-0 Start to the Campaign

The Washington Huskies continued their strong start to the campaign, winning their home opener in dominating fashion against Mount St. Mary’s. This followed a season-opening upset victory against Texas, in Shanghai.

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With two wins to start the campaign, you would think Lorenzo Romar was ecstatic. However, that’s not quite the case for the Huskies head coach, with the previous season still fresh in his memory.

After storming out to a 11-0 record, the Huskies inexplicably came crashing back down to earth. In their last 20 games, they could only muster five more wins.

This resulted in a mediocre 16-15 record, including 5-13 in Pac-12 play. Unsurprisingly, despite battling hard, they lost to Stanford in the first round of the Pac-12 Tournament.

As such, Romar can hardly be blamed for being weary, as he explained to Percy Allen of the Seattle Times, and the rest of the media: “We’ve only played (two) games and it is such a long season.

“We’ve had it both ways where we started out not doing very well but ended doing great, and other years we started doing great, ranked, and ended up not doing very well — last year, and the 2006-07 season. So we can’t draw any conclusions right now.”

After the way last season ended, there were actually calls for the South Gate, California native to be fired. Whilst the frustration of fans and media alike was understandable, this was an overreaction.

Fortunately, the powers that be realized Romar deserved another chance. You don’t just give up on a guy who essentially revived the fortunes of the program.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you allow the former Golden State Warriors draft pick to stay on indefinitely, if results don’t improve. As such, a 2-0 start to the 2015-16 campaign has been a welcome (and necessary) breath of fresh air for the Huskies.

As Romar told Allen and the rest of the media: “I’m just excited that our guys are so willing to do what we ask them to do.”

However, you can tell the Huskies coach still had last season on his mind, when he was asked if he thinks the team is ahead of schedule: “I would have liked to see us take care of the basketball better.

“We don’t box out very well. There’s some things that I see as a coach where we understand what the standard is supposed to look like and we’re not there yet, so I can’t say we’re ahead of the pace.”

Moving forward, it remains to be seen if the experience of last season acts as a motivation or hindrance to Romar and the Huskies. Either way, the next three months should prove to be extremely interesting.

Next: Sigi Schmid has unfinished business to take care of with the Sounders

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