Inside The Huskies

Sprinkle Basketball Era Set to Begin as Huskies Host UC Davis

The UW opens the season on Tuesday night, with tipoff at 7 p.m.

Dan Raley

Danny Sprinkle is ready to open his first UW basketball season.
Danny Sprinkle is ready to open his first UW basketball season. / Dan Raley

For those attending the University of Washington-UC Davis basketball game on Tuesday night at Alaska Airlines Arena, the best advice we can offer is this: Grab a roster once you come in the door because you'll need it.

As the Danny Sprinkle coaching era begins, a nearly all new team of Huskies will introduce itself to the visiting Aggies and the local fan base following a 77 percent roster transformation bent on infusing new life into a Montlake program that had grown stale after seven seasons with Mike Hopkins in charge.

While the personable Hopkins was everyone's buddy -- how else did you keep your job after a 5-21 season, pandemic or not -- Sprinkle, the 27th UW basketball coach, brings more of an edge to the sideline. Consequently, he handpicked eight transfers to go with a pair of freshman recruits and three holdover Huskies to bring about change across the board.

"It's exciting to like walk into Alaska Airlines Arena while seeing our guys with 'Huskies' on their chest," said the coach, who was raised on UW sports because his father played football at the school. "That's exciting to me. It's something I've always dreamed of."

Fans aren't the only ones unfamiliar with this UW basketball team. In its preseason predictions released on Monday, The Big Ten Huddle ranked the Huskies tied with Penn State for last place among the 18 conference members.

Sprinkle will build his team around 6-foot-8, 250-pound power forward Great Osobor, who has been mentioned on some preseason All-America teams and very publicly received a $2 million NIL financial package, and could only shrug at the low regard held for the Huskies.

"Good, we've got to earn our way out of dead last," he said. "On some days in practice, we have played like we should be picked dead last. But I think we're better than that."

Sprinkle also mentioned that his former team, Utah State, was picked last in the Mountain Conference last season before it finished 27-8, won the regular-season title and advanced to the NCAA Tournament.

In last week's exhibition warm-up, Sprinkle came out with a starting lineup of guards Mekhi Mason from Rice, DJ Davis from Butler and and Tyree Ihenacho from North Dakota, holdover 6-foot-11 senior Franck Kepnang at center and Osobor, who was the Mountain West Player of the Year, and there's a good chance that five could open against UC Davis.

Sprinkle said 10 or 11 of his 13 scholarship players ultimately could be starters for him, with the coach open to swapping out lineups fairly regularly. Yet he won't have 6-foot-9 forward Chris Conway, an Oakland transfer who's dealing with knee issues. However, guard Luis Kortright, a Rhode Island transfer who also missed the opener after going into concussion protocol from practice, has been cleared to play.

Tipoff is set for 7 p.m. with the Huskies coming off a 17-15 season and hosting a UC Davis team that finished 20-13 and returns its top player, 6-foot-3 guard Tyler Johnson, a 17.8-pont scorer who has drawn preseason mention as a Big West Player of the Year nominee.

Don't forget that roster.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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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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