FROM LAS VEGAS -- Here's what Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar told reporters after Washington's season-ending 71-69 loss to Stanford in the first round of the NCAA tournament on Wednesday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
(Opening statement) “Heck of a ballgame. I really, really feel for our players. Our guys fought, guys played together. We came up short. You hate to see when someone puts forth an effort like that, that you come out on the short end. That was the case.”
(On Stanford’s final possession) “Well, we got them to miss, they got the offensive rebound and somehow the ball gets in (Chasson) Randle’s hand and he’d be one of the last guys we’d want to see with an open look. There it was.”
(On Dan Kingma shooting the free throws) “We were fine with him taking it. He came to the ball, we knew they’d be harping him. The most important thing is to get the ball inbounds. We were able to get the ball inbounds against Utah in our last game, crunch time, and he was in there the same way.”
(On Kingma’s highs and lows in the game) “I thought he had highs and one low. He missed one free throw. Everything else I thought was positive that he did on the floor. He gave us positive energy on the defensive end. He hit three 3s. He missed one free throw.”
(Ideal to have a freshman walk-on shooting those free throws?) “In Dan Kingma’s case, it’s fine. Dan Kingma is not … yeah, he’s fine.”
(On stagnant offense down the stretch) “We were taking much too long to get into our offense. whether we were tired at the time or what. We were kind of jogging to spots at the time and it was taking too long to develop, and we had to get a shot off at the end of the shot clock. We didn’t get into it quickly enough on several of those.”
(When do you think disappointment of this season gives way to planning for next year?) “Well, once I move forward, I’m not looking back, that’s for sure. But 20 minutes after this game is over, I haven’t looked forward yet. Still reflecting this game right now. But there will come a point when we’re going to move, and when we move forward, we’re going to really move forward.”
(Thoughts on the season?) “A lot of misfortune, to sum it up in one word. A lot of misfortune.”
(Learn anything about yourself as a coach?) “There were some things that we were forced to do that I was never comfortable with doing, that we had to do, and there were some things I learned from it, because we were forced to do it, some things were effective. And when we have our full roster next year and years to come, certain things we did this year when we didn’t have all of our guys, we’ll continue to do in some ways.”
(Is the zone one of those things?) “Yeah. You know I’m not much of a zone guy. And I thought even with our zone, our zone got better at the end. I thought the last couple games, we played our zone really well, did a really good job. So we’ll see.”
(Do you have enough big guys?) “Last year and this year, I thought we had enough. More than enough. Beginning of the year, we had five or six guys. By the end of the year, we didn’t. we have enough if this doesn’t happen again. What happened here, I don’t know any team in the world that would have enough, in the history of basketball. When everybody, something happens, almost everybody, that’s not something you can really practice for or expect.”
(Will you take anything from this game in particular?) “We’ll look at this game. We played a bunch of games this year. So every game has some things you’re going to look at, that you’re going to like and not like. You’re going to adjust and keep – every game has one of those. So this will be another one. You learn from every game.”
(Do you think Nigel Williams-Goss will look at the NBA, and will you help him with that process?) “I don’t know very many – first of all, if he does, yeah – I don’t know very many these days that don’t take a look at it.”
(When do you expect to know his decision?) “Because of the rules, the way it’s structured, you usually know by the end of April some time.”
(On rallying to play well in the last two games after a bad stretch) “I told our team that I was so proud of – I wasn’t proud that we lost. I was proud of the fact, what we’ve been through this year, how we were able to still collect ourselves, and finish playing good basketball. I was really proud of them to be able to do that. I’ve seen teams go through not quite what we went through in terms of losing all your players, but I’ve seen teams lose down the stretch and just throw in the towel. Our guys didn’t throw in the towel. Our guys stuck with it. It was good to see that.”
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