Inside The Huskies

Will Conroy Better Be Recruiting Lil Will Conroy Right Now

The namesake has a lot of game for just a 10-year-old.

Dan Raley

Will Conroy Better Be Recruiting Lil Will Conroy Right Now
Will Conroy Better Be Recruiting Lil Will Conroy Right Now /

If Will Conroy someday becomes the University of Washington basketball coach — OK when that happens — it will be because of his abject loyalty to the Huskies.

His UW relationship, of course, began with Bob Bender as a player, continued with Lorenzo Romar as a point guard and an assistant coach, and resumes as chief program-rebuilder for Mike Hopkins.

Oh, yes, there's this matter of a little point guard who could be a very big deal at some point.

Will Conroy, If you're worth your salt as a basketball recruiter, you'll begin wooing Will Conroy Jr. right now.

Offer him a car, a bigger allowance, as many inducements as you can come up with.

Little Will is 10 years old, going on 20, playing like he's 30.

An absolute magician with a basketball. 

He's got more moves than Jamal Crawford.

He's got better hair than stylish ex-Husky guard Marcus Tsohonis.

He's a passer, a shooter, a baller.

Lil Will even wears No. 5, same as Big Will did.

Check out the video and tell me I'm wrong.

If he doesn't have his first scholarship offer yet, it's coming.

Gonzaga thinks it already has him.

After all, Mark Few views Seattle as a foreign country.

UCLA just gave the kid's cell phone number to Bill Walton.

That big redheaded nonstop talker will inform the kid that he's a doozy, using his quaint flower-child lexicon.

Tell Walton right back that Little Will's nickname is "Doozy."

Kentucky's John Calipari right now is sleeping in his car out front of the Conroy residence.

Tell him the only K that involves him and this youngster is the strikeout symbol.

Will Conroy, you better be sweet-talking this wunderkind every chance you get from here on out.

Offer him double dessert.

Make his bed.

Give him your recliner.

Remember Lil Will is graduating from high school in seven years. 

Garfield? 

South Puget Sound school?

We don't know yet.

If Lil Will wants to take all five permissible recruiting trips, bring him into Alaska Airlines Arena through five different doors.

Get his signature now.

Both on the Father's Day card he bought for you and on that UW national letter of intent.

You can help him with the NIL — name, image and likeness — because you have the SAME name, image and likeness!!!

We can tell he's got that similar manic craving for basketball as you do.

That he'll be taking us on that all-day tour of the city courts soon as you once did.

That he'll insist on being a shooting and passing guard just as you were.

Tell him, no, he's not going straight to the NBA G League rather than college.

It doesn't matter that you played there once and was an MVP. 

Threaten to ground him if he persists.

Take away his bike, the one with the training wheels.

Then the car when he's old enough to drive one.

Now answer the door.

Tell Nick Saban to go away.

Them him the Tide went out.

Tell him he can't have your kid.

What does he mean Little Will is the No. 3 running back in the nation in AAU for his age group?

No, he's not another Derrick Henry.

Not another Shaun Alexander either.

He's another Will Conroy.

Once and for all, this kid is not really a football player, no matter how many times he runs to the end zone.

Lil Will is a roundballer through and through.

He's someone who can keep you, his dad, employed at the UW for a long time.

He just needs to pull on the purple and gold.

He's a 5-star recruit who one day will have jersey No. 5 retired in his honor and hanging from the rafters.

Alongside Brandon Roy's 3, Isaiah Thomas' 2 and Bob Houbregs' 25.

All right, Will Conroy, you can wake up now.

You're kid needs you in the backyard for a little 1-on-1.

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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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