Inside The Huskies

90 Seconds of Mike Hopkins at His Offbeat Postgame Best

The Husky coach almost always puts on a show in his media moments.

Dan Raley

In this story:

He's Mike Hopkins, the University of Washington basketball coach for the past six seasons. Yet put a beard on him and and make him stand up in front of an audience, and with his delivery of facial animations and body contortions, and he could be the late comedian George Carlin.

Or any other 1970s and 1980s jokester, such as Steve Martin, David Letterman and Jerry Seinfeld, working in new material and working his way though different venues while continually making everyone laugh. Yes, we could see him with a banjo in his hands.

Husky fans see only this lanky fiftyish and balding man smiling and grimacing while pacing the sideline in Alaska Airline Arena. 

Everyone should have the opportunity to watch him manage one of his postgame news conferences. You just never know when he's going to change expressions, turn somewhat manic while describing something with his eyes bulging and then either blurt something out or slap the table. 

Those fans who still want to see him fired, especially after his program sank to a 5-21 pandemic record, where nothing was funny as his teams played and lost in empty arenas and he was relegated to media zoom calls, would probably change their opinion  if they could see him up close.

Reporters do not sleep through his postgame media moments. His personality, his pure joy of what he's doing, doesn't permit and nodding off.

After his Huskies beat Seattle U 77-66 in their most recent basketball outing, Hopkins went into a bizarre routine with his ultimate weirdness and fun to explain things in a 13-minute postgame session. 

He compared his zone to a Little League baseball defense, letting his shoulders sag and his jaw protrude while breaking into chant of "Hey batter batter, hey, batter batter, swing!"

Huh? You had to be there.

Hopkins served up no less than five different routines wrapped into his standard media obligation. We pulled 90 seconds of his most animated descriptions out of the UW-produce video. Sit back and enjoy this offbeat coach.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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