The Washington Huskies are running out of patience. Two years into the Danny Sprinkle era, the program's Big Ten experiment has produced two straight losing seasons, zero NCAA tournament appearances, and a roster that turns over almost completely every spring. Now Sprinkle enters year three with a brand-new team — only 33.9 percent of last season's minutes return, 12th in the Big Ten — and a blunt mandate: get over .500 for the first time on his watch, or the noise around Montlake gets a lot louder.
Start with what walked out the door, because it's staggering. Hannes Steinbach, the 18.5-points-per-game big man, left for the NBA. Zoom Diallo (15.7 ppg) transferred to Kentucky. Desmond Claude (13.3) and Quimari Peterson (9.2) exhausted their eligibility. Franck Kepnang followed Diallo to Kentucky. Bryson Tucker entered the draft, JJ Mandaquit left for Arizona, Courtland Muldrew for Georgia Tech. The program's one NCAA tournament appearance in the last 14 postseasons — the 2019 team under Mike Hopkins — feels further away every year, and Sprinkle was hired in 2024 specifically to drag Washington back to March.
What's left is a core that Sprinkle believes in. Junior guard Wesley Yates III is the centerpiece: 12.7 points per game last season, a smooth three-level scorer with another gear to reach. Junior center Lathan Sommerville (4.3 ppg) and redshirt freshman Mady Traore give the frontcourt size and upside, while sophomores Nikola Dzepina — who flashed real offensive range at the FIBA U20 EuroBasket this summer — and Jasir Rencher round out the returners. Rencher's story is the emotional one: he missed most of last season with a heart issue and has been practicing with the team again, a comeback worth rooting for regardless of the box score.
The transfer haul is where Sprinkle's season will be decided. Ryan Beasley arrives from San Francisco (13.6 ppg) as an instant-offense guard. LeJuan Watts comes from Texas Tech (11.8 ppg), a forward who can initiate the offense as a primary ballhandler — positional versatility Sprinkle loves. Parker Friedrichsen, the Davidson transfer (10.8 ppg), is the high-volume shooter this roster has lacked since Sprinkle arrived. Steele Venters, a fifth-year wing from Gonzaga, brings poise. And Harun Zrno, the 6-foot-7 Bosnian guard from Rutgers (6.4 ppg, 35.6 percent from the field, 33.8 from three), fills the pure spot-up shooter role — he averaged 17.5 points on nearly 44 percent from three in Bosnian pro ball before coming stateside, and he dropped 21 with five threes at Wisconsin last season.
The final piece arrived late: Tayshawn Comer, the Nevada guard who averaged 11 points and 3.6 assists while starting 36 games and guiding the Wolf Pack to the NIT quarterfinals. Comer's addition was only possible because of the ongoing eligibility lawsuits — he was part of the California case seeking fifth years for the class of 2022, the same legal wave that got Washington football's Ta'ita'i Uiagalelei another season. Sprinkle called him "a gym rat, a winner" with the ability to get into the paint and create for others. Add international signees — Australian guard Tristan Devers, Croatian forward Boris Tišma, Brazilian big Wini Braga Silva — plus local freshman Lattimore Ford, the 6-foot-7 Mount Si wing who picked UW over Oklahoma, Stanford and San Diego State after fighting back from a devastating knee injury, and this is a roster with 14 new faces and a whole lot of unknowns.
Sprinkle's own story is part of the intrigue. The Montana native built his name at Montana State, then won 28 games in one season at Utah State before Washington hired him in 2024. His teams play hard, defend, and share the ball — the blueprint worked in the Big Sky and the Mountain West. The Big Ten is a different animal: 20-game conference slates, road trips to Purdue and Michigan State, and a league where half the teams are tournament locks. Two losing seasons in, the question isn't whether Sprinkle can coach — it's whether his roster-building can keep pace with the portal era's arms race.
The history on Montlake demands more than this. Hec Edmundson Pavilion — "Hec Ed" — has hosted Washington basketball since 1927, and the Dawg Pack student section has seen legends: Brandon Roy, the three-time All-Star; Isaiah Thomas, the two-time All-Star who became a Boston folk hero; Nate Robinson, the three-time dunk champion; Markelle Fultz, the No. 1 pick in 2017; Dejounte Murray and Terrence Ross. Lorenzo Romar's teams made six NCAA tournaments in the 2000s, including Sweet 16 runs, and the 1953 Huskies reached the Final Four. This is not a program that should be an afterthought in its own conference.
The Big Ten reality is unforgiving. Washington joined the league in 2024 alongside Oregon, UCLA and USC, trading the Pac-12's West Coast comfort for the nation's deepest conference. The travel is brutal, the home slate at Alaska Airlines Arena is the lifeline, and the non-conference schedule has to produce wins because the league slate won't be kind. Sprinkle needs this team to gel fast — 14 new players, a new point guard situation, and a conference where there's nowhere to hide.
What defines the 2026-27 Huskies is the simplest thing in sports: it's time. Time for Sprinkle's vision to show up in the standings. Time for Yates to become a star, for the transfers to click, for Hec Ed to matter again in March conversations. The talent is real — Beasley and Watts have scored at high-major levels, Friedrichsen and Zrno can shoot, Comer brings toughness — but talent that just met each other in October has to become a team by January. If it clicks, Washington can crash the Big Ten's middle class and dream about the bubble. If it doesn't, year four starts with a different kind of pressure. On Montlake, everybody knows which outcome they need.
