Romar faults lack of preparation

Lorenzo Romar found the one person to blame for all that went wrong in Sunday’s 77-64 loss at St. Louis.

It was easy to single out one person who was at fault for all the missed defensive assignments, jump shots and general lack of poise.

The one person?

Lorenzo Romar.

“I point right back at myself,” he said during his Tuesday press conference. “We made errors – and me as the head coach. We should have had our team a little more prepared at that point.”

Romar used the word “frustrated” to describe his feelings about the loss. But it was more about seeing where St. Louis was as a team and in its performance in comparison with his team.

“They were further along in terms of their preparation for this year than we were,” Romar said. “I put that on me. I feel like we should have been further along in what we were doing offensively and defensively.”

So what exactly what went wrong? Well, it was a little of everything.

Offensively, the Huskies took a lot of quick shots, settling for jumpers after one or two passes, particularly when St. Louis started pulling away.

“Obviously that’s my fault on that,” Romar said. “Early on as you’re putting your team together, a lot of times offensively you kind of let the guys play more just to try to find out who can do what when they’re actually playing.”

It’s not giving them free reign, but he likes to know what certain players can do with certain teammates on the floor.

“Sometimes you can restrict players and hold them back and you don’t know what they are capable of giving you,” he said. “I kind of let the guys blow it out early on probably too much. It usually bites us early because we don’t do as good of a job offensively as we should do. That’s certainly was one of the reasons we played the way we did against St. Louis offensively, not to mention they’re just really good defensively.”

So some of that freedom will be taken away in practice this week, the restrictions could carry over possibly to Friday’s game against Houston Baptist.

“You tighten up the reigns a little bit,” he said. “You go back and make sure that everything that we’ve been taught, we really, really hold them accountable. Not that you’re not holding them accountable before.”

But it’s hard for him to stymie his team’s offensive creativity. He didn’t like it as a player. And he doesn’t want to be that type of coach.

“But maybe it’s something in me that when I was a player, I played so many times for coaches that just didn’t let you blink, didn’t let you express yourself at all offensively. All of sudden you get away from that system and you’re like, ‘I didn’t know you could do that. You have some offensive skills.’ ”

As for the defensive issues, the Huskies were late in some rotations, much of it while trying to defend ball screens.

“You better be good at it. If not, you’re going to get burned by it,” Romar said. “Last year at home against USC, we got burned by it early. There are about seven ways to defend a ball screen and if you are trying to defend it several different ways in a game, sometimes there can be confusion.”

That confusion will be addressed this week.

FOUL SHOTS

C.J. Wilcox suffered a concussion after a nasty screen, but Romar said he should be ready for Friday’s game. … Washington played 2-3 zone on eight occasions against St. Louis. The Billikens either scored or drew fouls on six of the those eight occasions. … Romar smiled when asked about the second NBA charity game that Jamal Crawford is organizing. The game will be played at Alaska Airlines Arena on Dec. 15 and will feature John Wall, Kevin Durant and local players such as Crawford, Isaiah Thomas, Nate Robinson, Jason Terry and Brandon Roy. “I will be there,” he said.

Ryan Divish: 253-597-8483 ryan.divish@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/uwsports