• Washington at Stanford, 2:30 p.m. today, FSN
STANFORD, CALIF. – It almost felt like returning to the scene of the crime. There was Washington senior guard Justin Dentmon, sitting in Stanford’s Maples Pavilion, about 70 feet from the spot where he committed one of the most memorably painful blunders in recent UW basketball history.
The crowd was deafening on that day four years ago, when Dentmon’s freshman error opened the door for the most improbable of Stanford victories.
However, the building was empty and quiet Friday when Dentmon sat down after practice and said he never thinks back to that day.
“Not at all,” he said. “It doesn’t even come to me.”
Dentmon is back at Maples Pavilion one last time today, when the No. 22 Huskies meet the Cardinal.
He’s never won there. Neither have any of his teammates. Neither has his coach. No UW men’s team has won there since 1993 – a stretch of 15 straight losses.
They have come close often. A three-point loss last year. One point the year before that. But never closer than Jan. 29, 2006.
That was Brandon Roy’s senior season, and the freshman season for Dentmon and Jon Brockman. The Huskies – who would eventually advance to the NCAA tournament’s round of 16 – arrived at Stanford ranked 10th nationally and contending for the Pacific-10 Conference regular-season championship.
They had suffered a two-point loss at California three days earlier. But they seemed to be on the verge of a bounce-back victory at Stanford when a pair of Roy free throws gave UW a three-point lead with 2.1 seconds remaining.
Stanford inbounded from under its own basket to Matt Haryasz. He relayed a long pass to guard Chris Hernandez, who launched a desperation 3-point shot at the buzzer.
The shot missed; but the whistle blew.
Dentmon had hit Hernandez’s shooting hand.
Needing all three free throws to force overtime, Hernandez sank the first two cleanly and then coaxed the third through after a brief stutter on the rim.
That sent the game into overtime, where the stunned Huskies were outscored 13-4.
Even the steady Roy was staggered.
“For the first time in basketball, I feel sorry for myself,” he said. “I feel like I did everything I could to win, and then that happened.”
Coach Lorenzo Romar also understood the potential impact.
“What’s important at this point is we don’t take a nosedive,” he said at the time. “I’ve seen teams in this situation not recover from it.”
For the most part, Washington did recover. The Huskies lost their next game at Washington State, but then ended the regular season on an eight-game winning streak. However, the Stanford loss continued to haunt them because they came up one game behind UCLA in the Pac-10 standings.
Romar noted this week that sometimes it isn’t just the team that doesn’t recover from such a setback. Sometimes it’s the player.
“I know there are some that’s happened to where it was just such a bad performance that they never recovered mentally,” he said. “But not with him. He bounced back from it.”
Dentmon’s recovery was not a straight upward arrow.
At the end of that season he was voted to the All-Pac-10 freshman team. But he seemed to regress in disappointing sophomore and junior seasons.
Now, as a senior, he is resurrecting his career with a season so solid that he has been mentioned as a Pac-10 player of the year candidate.
The talent on this season’s roster allows Dentmon to play without the ball more, and he has flourished in that role: second on the team in scoring and second in the Pac-10 since the start of league play.
Sitting in Maples on Friday, he was asked if he is proud that he was able to shake off that freshman blunder.
“You had to at that time,” he said. “The leaders that we had on that team – Brandon Roy, Bobby Jones – emphasized letting stuff go because it’s a long season. So, we just had to look forward to being a good team throughout that long season.”
This afternoon, Dentmon will say goodbye to Maples while still working for two things that he might have achieved as a freshmen if only he had avoided Hernandez’s shooting hand.
“I just think it’s another gym to play in, another opportunity for us to get better, really,” he said. “Yeah, we haven’t beat them (here) in a long time, but I think it’s just an opportunity for us to get better and beat them. … The thing that I have in the back of my head is the Pac-10 championship. It’s something that I had on my mind since my freshman year when it slipped away that year.”
Don Ruiz, 253-597-8808
blogs.thenewstribune.com/uwsports
UW men’s basketball gameday
NO. 22 WASHINGTON (16-6 OVERALL, 7-3 PACIFIC-10 Conference) AT STANFORD (14-6, 4-6)
Tipoff: 2:30 p.m., Maples Pavilion, Stanford, Calif.
TV: FSNRadio: 950-AM
Series: Stanford leads, 69-60. UW won the earlier meeting this season, 84-83, Jan. 8 in Seattle. The Huskies have lost 15 straight games in Maples Pavilion since a one-point win in January 1993.
Statistical leaders: For UW – G Isaiah Thomas, 16.5 ppg and 2.8 apg, F Jon Brockman, 11 rpg. For Stanford – G Anthony Goods, 16.8 ppg; G/F Landry Fields, 6.6 rpg; G Mitch Johnson, 4.5 apg.
Scouting report: Justin Dentmon (15.4 ppg) has passed Brockman (15) as UW’s second-leading scorer. Washington leads the Pac-10 in scoring (79.6 ppg), Stanford is fourth (73.8). UW also leads in rebounding margin (plus 9.8), Stanford is eighth (plus 0.1). … Stanford’s win over Washington State on Thursday ended the Cardinal’s three-game skid. … Individually, Goods ranks sixth in the Pac-10 in scoring, Johnson ranks third in steals and seventh in assists. Stanford reserve C/F Josh Owens ranks fifth in field-goal percentage (56 percent) and eighth in blocked shots (18). … Johnson, from Seattle (O’Dea H.S.), averages 7.1 points and 7.1 in his seven career games against UW. … The Cardinal is 11-2 at home. … This concludes a stretch of four road games for the Huskies, their longest of the season.
Next: 8 p.m. Thursday, vs. Oregon State, Hec Edmundson Pavilion.
Don Ruiz, The News Tribune
