Matchup of Huskies seems familiar

SAN DIEGO – Many of the Washington men’s basketball players remember tuning in to CBS on March 19, 1998 to watch the Huskies take on Connecticut in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament in Greensboro, N.C.

They’d watched as Washington made a run to the third round of the tournament. The Huskies had started to turn things around under Bob Bender, losing in the first round of the NIT the previous two years. But the last time the Huskies had been in the NCAA tournament – in 1986 – Mike Jensen was 3, Brandon Roy and Ryan Appleby were 2, and Jon Brockman hadn’t even been born.

Now, those four, along with their teammates, will get their shot at UConn when the two teams meet in the Sweet 16 on Friday at the MCI Center in Washington. Connecticut set up the meeting by defeating Kentucky 87-83 on Sunday, a day after Washington beat Illinois 67-64.

In 1998, the players watched as Bender led a team featuring Donald Watts and Deon Luton in the back court and Todd MacCulloch and Patrick Femerling up front on a run that seemingly came out of nowhere. Washington entered the tournament as an 11 seed after going 11-7 in the Pac-10 and 18-9 overall. Playing in Washington, the Huskies got 31 points from MacCulloch in a 69-68 upset of No. 23 Xavier and followed that with an 81-66 victory over Richmond.

The run figured to be over in the Sweet 16 as UConn was ranked No. 6 and was considered a national champion contender. But Washington, playing the other Huskies for the first time, somehow stayed even, then led with seconds to play. But Richard Hamilton, who now plays for the Detroit Pistons, made a jump shot at the buzzer, ending the UW’s run.

“Richard Hamilton, man, he ruined everything,” Brockman said.

“That’s when I first started watching the Huskies, that year,” Jensen said. “At the beginning of that year, I never thought they were going to make it that far and all of a sudden they’re playing UConn. All those guys are in the NBA now. It was crazy.”

Connecticut (29-3), the top seed in the region, is again considered one of the favorites to win the tournament. But now Washington (26-6) is a legitimate elite team.

But it was the 1998 team that helped make this meeting possible. Both Jensen and Roy, who were in high schoolers in ‘98, said seeing what that Huskies team accomplished made an impression.

“That was the first time you saw that Washington could be a basketball school,” Jensen said. “I was too young in 1986 to see that team, and for as long as I could remember, Washington never won in basketball. That year showed what was possible here.”

“It definitely stood out to me,” Roy said. “I think that year made a lot of people around here think that Washington could be a good basketball school, which I never thought before that.”

Connecticut may be the most talented team in the country. But like Washington, UConn lost its first Big East tournament game (to Syracuse), then struggled to beat 16th-seed Albany 72-59 and held off Kentucky.

“We’re confident against anybody we play,” Roy said. “There isn’t going to be a team we play that we don’t think we can beat now.”