Huskies

The latest news and analysis on Husky men's hoops.

Here’s postgame comments from coach Lorenzo Romar following Washington’s 61-54 loss to No. 23 UCLA.

(Overview) “I don’t have a lot to say. It was pretty obvious to our team and me where the difference in that game was. UCLA did a great job of forcing us into 19 turnovers, which they converted into 29 points. They scored 61, so that’s right at half of their points. It’s similar to what happened at their place. That was the difference in the game right there, along with their two freshmen bookending the second half, Jordan Adams in the beginning and Shabazz Muhammad taking over after that. It was a tag team effort from those two offensively.”

(On UCLA’s transition offense) “We were concerned with USC’s transition and they got one transition basket in that game. I thought tonight we regressed. Larry Drew has a great push. One thing about playing up-tempo is that if you have someone to push the ball and you have finishers when you distribute the ball, you’re hard to deal with, and that’s what they have. A lot of their guys are capable of scoring 20 points a game, or even 30. When you have someone who is one of the best assist players in the country in Larry Drew, it makes for a tough night if you’re not organized in transition. Tonight they burned us a couple times.”

(On UCLA forcing turnovers) “I talked about it prior to this game. Some teams that you play against, everywhere you turn, they’re right there. I thought we got pretty good shots at the basket a lot of times, but—especially those freshmen—they’re basketball players. Basketball players know how to play the game and they read situations, they anticipate, they are long, they can get to a lot of deflections, they’re quick, they tip from behind, and they present problems in terms of you being able to take care of the ball. They created problems for us in taking care of the basketball.”

(On seniors’ performances on Senior Day) “You hate to see them go out with a loss. That hasn’t happened very often here. We usually do a pretty good job on Senior Day. I thought Scott Suggs stepped up and offensively had a good game, and I thought he really battled Shabazz. He’s giving up around 30 pounds there, and he really battled.”

(On decision to pull Shawn Kemp after hot start) “He ended up playing 24 minutes, making sure he was fresh, making sure he didn’t get winded. Jernard Jarreau had a heck of  a game last game, and I guarantee you if Shawn would have played more and Jernard wouldn’t have, it would have been why wasn’t he in there. Shawn was still in there for 24 minutes, and that’s over half the game. Desmond in the second half came out and got 11 rebounds in 17 minutes and when we came back he provided a lot of energy for us. It could be a guy who hit eight in a row, but the complexion of the game changes, and somebody is giving you something of what you need during that time, and what we needed was energy. When Desmond gave us that energy, we started to really play basketball.”

(On decision to keep N’Diaye in game despite offensive troubles) “When we made our run, Aziz was a presence on defense. He was blocking shots, and I didn’t want to take him out at that point. I know he made some mistakes offensively, but we were getting back in that game and we took the lead because of defense. We began to get stops, and that’s what got us going.”