Hopkins Draws Reprieve; UW Simply Couldn't Afford to Fire Him

The Husky basketball coach will return for seventh season.

At the University of Washington, nice guys don't necessarily finish last. They're just the last to get fired. 

On Sunday, athletic director Jen Cohen announced the school would retain Mike Hopkins as its men's basketball coach for a seventh year amid growing speculation that he would be dismissed following a fourth consecutive underperforming season.

For the ever personable Hopkins, it's a huge reprieve. It came just four days after the UW was eliminated from the Pac-12 Tournament by Colorado and finished 16-16, losing its final three games. Considering his overall track record in Montlake, it was nothing short of amazing.

The Huskies have been to the NCAA Tournament once in a dozen years. 

They've had just one winning season among their last four.

They're still just three years removed from a 5-21 showing during the COVID pandemic, which was the second-worst in school history.

How anyone, let alone Hopkins, could survive all of that runs counter to the way nearly every other college athletic department nationwide operates these days, which is to pull a quick trigger on coaches when things begin to veer off course.

However, maybe that's not such a bad thing that the UW didn't do it because firings usually are messy, cause players to transfer and force teams to start over at square one.

“The recently concluded men’s basketball season fell below the expectations that we have for all of our athletic programs at the University of Washington,” Cohen said in a statement. “I am disappointed, Coach Hopkins and his staff are disappointed and, importantly, our passionate fans and supporters are disappointed."

Cohen went on to say that everyone involved understands that improvement must be made. What she didn't say was she couldn't really afford to make a basketball coaching change and invest in a new more expensive leader at this point.

While Hopkins presents a positive face for the basketball program with his personality, this decision just verifies once more where the sport stands in regards to Husky football — a distant second.

UW basketball typically has been a second-division program in the Pac-12 and all of its other conference iterations. The Huskies have succeeded at the highest levels of postseason play, such as in 1953, 1998, 2005 and 2006, only when football was faring poorly. The program simply exists if not pretends to be a driving force in the athletic department.

In this case, Hopkins was owed $6.3 million for the next two seasons and the school went out and invested in the football program with huge raises for Kalen DeBoer and his staff. In particular, DeBoer gets paid $4 million annually and offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb now makes $2 million per year, which ranks the latter as one of the highest-paid football assistant coaches in the country. Add to that the Jimmy Lake $9.9 million contract settlement. 

The collective numbers simply didn't add up to making a basketball coaching change and putting out anything better than what's in place now.

As for Hopkins, he has two exciting freshman guards in Keyon Menifield and Koren Johnson to build around, a pair of big men in Braxton Meah and Franck Kepnang to influence play inside, possibly his leading scorer and one-time Kentucky transfer Keion Brooks (17.7 points per game) returning, and a touted Texas high school guard in Wesley Yates joining the program. 

Yet the coach needs to take a hard look at how he does things — Hopkins personally didn't have the best of seasons either. 

His game-management skills were lacking at times, where coaches such as Oregon's Dana Altman showed him up with strategic moves and UW halftime adjustments were virtually non-existent. Player development has been incomplete, with big men Jackson Grant and Meah desperately in need of more offensive skills. Hopkins should junk his archaic zone defense once and for all.

On the plus side, Husky fans, though plenty of them grumbled loudly all season long, didn't abandon the basketball program. Apathy didn't kick in to an uncomfortable degree. Large crowds showed up at Alaska Airlines Arena to see the Huskies play Auburn, UCLA, Arizona, Oregon and Washington State. 

If that doesn't hold up, everyone will be addressing this coaching situation once more a year from now.

 

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