Washington Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar remarkably found anecdote after anecdote during this afternoon's media session to respond to the litany of questions about his team's rebounding struggles against Texas A&M and their subsequent fall from the Top 25 rankings.
He even stayed a few minutes after the 50-minute session to talk more about the best rebounder he ever saw.
Yet if there was a common theme among his responses it's that the team definitely has things to work on, but he is by no means going to panic. And one anecdote he gave about his coaching peers stood out as an interesting way to look at how UW's response to the TAMU loss fits in the big picture.
"In July or in the spring - or whenever it is - you'll run into coaches... 'Oh, ended up .500. Aw - seven times, one minute to go, they hit a three, our guy fouls out' or 'our guy hurts his ankle at the end and we lose the game'," said Romar almost 40 minutes into the session. "Here's what that means: you weren't good enough. When it's all said it done, what that meant is you weren't good enough."
The story continued, but essentially the point was the same as one made by The Point Guard College team on the day of UW's loss: neither one person nor one moment loses a game singlehandedly.
So calling a second timeout late in the game to draw up a play for redshirt freshman C.J. Wilcox is not Romar's greatest concern at this point. What is of concern is the little things such as boxing out and executing their offense throughout the game, which was actually why he chose to call that second timeout (there was uncertainty about whether they were ready to execute the play called).
And those are the things they'll be working on this week to prepare to be "good enough" down the road.
"There are other teams who are good enough, if you correct your mistakes - that's where we are," said Romar, finishing the anecdote. "Now in 2008, we weren't good enough - some crazy things happened to us in 2008 where we could have won the game, but we just weren't good enough. This team is good enough, but we have to see if there's corrections that can be made - like I said, the offensive execution and the rebounding. If we just make those corrections then with the schedule we've had, you could really say we'd be undefeated.
"So I think it's different than making excuses. You understand what I mean by that? Sometimes we can make excuses."
Although Washington's national reputation took a hit with the loss to TAMU after previous losses to Kentucky and Michigan State in the Maui Invitational, given the close outcomes - and the fact that TAMU had not lost in College Station in 69 previous games - this year's Huskies team is good enough to avoid making springtime excuses.