UW men's basketball team convinced turnaround is possible

This isn't the way Quincy Pondexter saw his senior season going. Not when he got here three seasons ago. And especially not now that the Washington men's basketball team enters its third weekend of Pac-10 play in last place, still reeling after a weekend sweep at the hands of Arizona State and Arizona during which it was outscored by a combined 34 points. "I hate losing, so it was real tough," Pondexter said. "I'm kind of a poor sport when it comes to losing. I just hate every bit of it, so it really affected me." It's likely affecting everyone. The Huskies (1-3) take on Stanford tonight in what amounts to a must-win game, a team that was once ranked as high as No. 12 in the country now intent only on getting out of the conference cellar. It's no wonder why they're there: They just haven't done many things right lately. In its last game against Arizona, Washington got pounded on the glass, didn't defend, couldn't run its offense correctly, and couldn't get more than one shot for Pondexter in the first half. And against Arizona State, the Huskies needed almost seven minutes to score their first field goal. So what's going on? They could start by playing as if they want to win, instead of simply expecting to, says head coach Lorenzo Romar. "We can't just show up and win games and do well," Romar said. "It's something that we try to communicate to our team from day one, that if we don't go out and really get after it, not only will we not do well, but we'll look bad. I think our team maybe realizes that a little more after this weekend." That might be part of why the Huskies have been so slow out of the gates lately. They scored just 19 points in the first half against ASU, by which point the game had been more or less decided already. And they were just as disoriented against the Wildcats two days later, allowing UA to run out to an 8-0 lead that set the tone for another long day on the offensive end. "Whatever it is, we've got to come out with a chip on our shoulders and come out with that killer mentality that we're not going to lose and we're not going to have these slow starts," said leading scorer Isaiah Thomas, who recovered to score 18 points in the second half against Arizona. "[If] we don't have those slow starts, it's a totally different game. We put ourselves in a big hole in the beginning of the game, and it's hard to come back, especially against the good teams." It's beginning to look more and more as if Stanford might be one of those. The Cardinal was expected to struggle this year, and while it's still going to be just about impossible for Stanford to make the NCAA tournament, it certainly isn't playing like it. They're coming off a sweep of USC and UCLA, and feature an almost-sure-thing-first-team-all-conference selection in Landry Fields. He's averaging 22.1 points and 8.9 rebounds per game, something that doesn't bode well for the Huskies considering their habit of allowing opponents to earn Pac-10 Player of the Week honors. Romar described the Cardinal as "a team that has role players that definitely know their roles, and sometimes we think of a role player as someone that doesn't do much scoring. Landry Fields knows his role. He's scoring; he's rebounding; he's doing it all for his team. Jeremy Green knows his role. He can flat-out shoot it, and their other players know what's important for them to win. Offensively, defensively, they play with purpose." Something the Huskies haven't done at all lately. "We've got to play with more heart, passion and pride," Pondexter said. "I think when we do that, a lot of things will take care of themselves. We haven't been playing Husky basketball like we should have, and once we get that settled, I think we'll be fine." Reach Sports Editor Christian Caple at sports@dailyuw.com.

UW men's basketball team convinced turnaround is possible

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