UW Huskies’ Mike Hopkins says team can reach another level in Pac-12 tourney

Fresh off being named the Pac-12 Coach of the Year for a second consecutive season, UW Huskies men’s basketball head coach Mike Hopkins joined 710 ESPN Seattle’s Brock Huard and Mike Salk to talk about the Huskies’ regular season and preview the conference tournament.

Oregon plays spoiler, hands UW Huskies first home loss

Washington (24-7) finished with just single home loss. That blemish was delivered in their regular season finale against Oregon Saturday.

“You’ve got to flush [that loss] for sure,” Hopkins told Huard and Salk, “and sometimes you just have those games. For the seniors at the beginning of the game, we knew it was going to be emotional. These guys are in uncharted territory; we’re still learning with this thing… And we just didn’t play your best game, and you wanted to have them have that moment… And however poorly we played in the first half, we still had those couple opportunities to get back in. We just didn’t have enough. But we’ve also got to credit Oregon, they did a great job.”

The Huskies still sit atop the Pac-12 heading into the conference tournament, which begins Wednesday. Hopkins says there’s “no question” his team still has gas left in the tank to make a strong postseason push.

“There’s no question about it. We have a whole [another] level we can go to… We’re getting healthy. I think there’s an excitement when you go down to T-Mobile arena and you walk in there and you feel it. And now we have a chance a day before to feel it before we play. The NCAA Tournament talk is all around. And so this is the excitement, this is what you play for. I know our energy will be there. But it goes back to executing your game plan, bottom line. If you’re focused and together, we can beat anybody.”

Listen to Mike Hopkins’ full interview in the audio clip embedded above. You can hear Brock Huard and Mike Salk break down the latest in Seattle sports every weekday from 7 a.m. – 10 a.m.