UW

Romar sees progress in Huskies win but still not satisfied.

Nov 25, 2011, 6:43 PM | Updated: 11:15 pm

Lorenzo Romar said that he would tighten the reins on his team after the loss to St. Louis this Sunday and that there would be no more experimenting on the floor. He wasn’t going to let his team “just play,” so to speak. He knew what they could do and there were certain things he wanted to see.

Before today’s game against Houston Baptist he gave them a warning.

“If you make a mistake you are coming out,” said Tony Wroten of the pre game message. Did he take the quick hook personally? No.

“I turned the ball over one time and he came and got me. It was my fault and there was nothing against him. He was making a statement that we have the potential to be a very good team. We just have to cut down on the mistakes.”

The hook came quick and often in the Huskies 99-65 win over Houston Baptist. The first substitutions came at 18:36 when CJ Wilcox and Aziz N’Diaye were called to the bench. Tony Wroten and Shawn Kemp Jr. replaced them with Kemp getting two quick buckets.

With Marquette and Duke coming up in less than two weeks and conference play not far behind, Romar says the team needs to be beyond the figuring things out stage.

“When there’s a point now in the season, we feel that you’re not learning anymore. There are things that you should know, Romar said. “We’re not as accountable for things you shouldn’t know, but when you should know, and I think that was what was accountable tonight.”

Most were not immune from the hook but since they were warned ahead of time and they knew why they were being pulled there were no hard feelings. In fact, this was the first post game I have seen where they guys were actually happy. Terrence Ross, CJ Wilcox and Tony Wroten were all smiles as they looked over the score sheets in the media room. They saw things beyond a win that they needed to see.

It was good to see Wilcox back on the floor after suffering a concussion in Sunday’s game at St. Louis. Wilcox finished with a team high 19 points, once again giving the team a spark going 5-9 from the three point line.

Terrence Ross had 13 rebounds and four blocked shots. Tony Wroten had what Romar called an interesting line with a chuckle. Fourteen points, three boards, some good defense and some sportcenter passes but then a 5/6 assist to turnover ratio.

What stood out to me and could bode very well for the future was the play of the freshmen bigs. Kemp with the quick four points when he entered the game was good to see. The play of Martin Breunig and Desmond Simmons in particular stood out to Romar.

“They gave us a lot of energy,” he said. “They got their hand on balls, they had deflections and rebounds. Desmond had six rebounds in 12 minutes. Martin in the first half had five rebounds in eight minutes. We don’t want anyone to get hurt, but Martin was the guy that went into the backcourt and set a very physical screen. It was not an illegal screen at all. Same thing happened to us, when we didn’t talk in St. Louis. They didn’t talk on that one. But there was a presence, a statement he was making, I thought, that he was going to come in and give us some physicality and energy. As freshman, they’re picking things up.”

They need to continue to pick things up and despite the victory Romar is not close to being satisfied with what he has seen on the court.

“We need to do much better. We have to play much better. I can’t give you a number on it. There were still too many open looks that they got, they still had too many of those. They still were able to pull down 14 offensive boards. They only had four in the first half and pulled down ten in the second half. It’s just too many.

Today we saw the Huskies rebound from the loss in St. Louis. The next test comes Friday on the road against Nevada.

UW

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Romar sees progress in Huskies win but still not satisfied.