What Dannen Said About UW Basketball When He Took Over

The first-year athletic director professed to be a big fan of the game, which meant his expectations were very high.

On the October day he was introduced as the new University of Washington athletic director, Troy Dannen afterward entertained a group of local media members in a side room at Conibear Shellhouse by telling them how he grew up on an Iowa farm as a huge fan of "Downtown" Freddie Brown of the Seattle Sonics.

Brown had come to this city from the University of Iowa to make a much bigger name for himself as this long-range shooting guard, as someone who terrorized NBA opponents once he got it going, plus he had that catchy nickname.

The message behind the memory was Dannen fully appreciated the game of basketball, which hasn't always been the case for athletic leaders at football-first universities, as administrators who tend to let the roundball game simply exist. 

Six months ago, what the UW athletic director really was saying out loud in somewhat veiled terms was Husky basketball coach Mike Hopkins had better show him great progress was being made or a change was coming rapidfire.

"This is a basketball city," Dannen said. "There's great basketball here. There's a great history of basketball here. We will share the same motivations to get it back going again."

The share part wasn't really accurate because on Friday afternoon Dannen informed Hopkins that he had been fired and would coach the team only through next week's Pac-12 Tournament, presuming the season ends there.

In what's been a real weird dynamic surrounding the program, most serious UW basketball fans and many but not all of those in the media have been prepared for Hopkins' dismissal as far back as last season.

Dannen, now faced with replacing the Husky football and men's basketball coaches with barely having time to settle in, no doubt has had a working list of coaching candidates for some time now. 

Coming from Tulane, Dannen might try to hire someone from a couple of time zones away, someone such as Hopkins, who came to the job from Syracuse, only it won't be another Hopkins. The athletic director already has made it very clear he's reluctant to elevate assistant coaches to the top job. See Ryan Grubb. He wants someone seasoned in the role of the program decision-maker.

The safest manner in which to hire a new Husky basketball coach would be to stick to a geographical pool of candidates, choosing someone such as Utah State's Danny Sprinkle, Washington State's Kyle Smith, Boise State's Leon Rice, Iowa State's T.J. Otzelberger (a former UW assistant), BYU's Mark Pope (a one-time Husky forward) and, should he make an exception to the aforementioned hiring rule, longtime UW assistant coach Will Conroy.

Hopkins will lead the Huskies (17-14 overall, 9-11 conference) through the Pac-12 Tournament, which likely will end for him and his team on Wednesday or Thursday in Las Vegas. 

Don't expect the new coach to be revealed right away because, if it's Sprinkle or Smith, they'll likely be preparing their teams for the NCAA Tournament and won't be able to engage with the UW for another two weeks at the minimum.

In Dannen's favor, he can hold up the coming Big Ten membership as a carrot to attract some worthy candidate and not have to convince him that the Pac-12 is better than it looks.

Last October, Dannen explained briefly how he needed to sit down with Hopkins, find out what was holding the program back from being a steady NCAA Tournament qualifier and determine what could he do to put the coach in a position to make positive things happen.

"I want to understand what does he need? What type of help does he need from me to succeed?" the UW athletic director said at the time. "That's part of the evaluation of the program. That evaluation also happens in football. Even if you're succeeding at the highest level, what needs to happen to either sustain it or stay ahead of people chasing you."

It probably didn't take Dannen all that long to gather the necessary information needed to make a proper assessment of the state of UW basketball. 

If nothing else, the athletic director could have called up Downtown Freddie Brown — who once was part of the UW broadcast team and had a son play for Huskies — introduced himself and asked the great one what he thought.

---

 

Go to si.com/college/washington to read the latest Inside the Huskies stories.

Follow Dan Raley of Inside the Huskies on X — @DanRaley1 or @UWFanNation.

Find Inside the Huskies on Facebook — at Inside the Huskies/FanNation at SI.com or https://www.facebook.com/dan.raley.12