It has been a tumultuous few months for Washington’s athletic department, to the point that events on Montlake seemed scripted by chaos itself.
For those scoring at home, the plot goes something like this:
The Huskies won a College Football Playoff game, lost the national championship game, lost their football coach, got bludgeoned by the transfer portal, hired a football coach, fired their basketball coach, lost their athletic director and hired a basketball coach.
It takes some serious academic prowess to keep all that straight, but let’s start with the bottom line: The basketball coaching search that played out over the past two weeks could have been much, much worse.
The Huskies caught a break, with Danny Sprinkle delivered to them on a silver platter by Danny Sprinkle himself.
It’s not often that the obvious candidate for a coaching vacancy presents himself so clearly, so indisputably and so unwaveringly despite all the surrounding turmoil.
In this case, the turmoil was UW athletic director Troy Dannen bolting for Nebraska after just five months on the job, in the middle of a basketball coaching search.
But Sprinkle was there for the taking thanks to blood ties to the school — his father, Bill, played defensive back for UW in the 1960s — and his desire to work in the Big Ten.
And Sprinkle, who reportedly is finalizing a six-year contract with UW, comes with the added bonus of being highly qualified for the job after miraculous work at Utah State.
The roster Sprinkle inherited in Logan last spring had zippo — no returning points, no returning rebounds, not even a returning assist.
He hit the transfer portal, assimilated the parts and forged a cohesive rotation that won the Mountain West regular-season title and reached the NCAAs.
Sure, the eighth-seeded Aggies were embarrassed by No. 1 Purdue in the second round, and UW fans undoubtedly would have preferred a 15-to-20-point loss rather than the 39-point obliteration that played out in Indianapolis.
But Purdue is not a relevant point of comparison to assess Sprinkle’s craftsmanship. Utah State’s first-round victory over No. 9 TCU provides far better insight.
The Aggies won the game handily with something Washington fans might not have recognized: a coherent offense.
Sprinkle’s team had a plan and executed the plan under the crucible of the NCAAs against an opponent from a power conference with a comparable seed.
So impressive was Sprinkle’s work, in fact, that he emerged as an obvious candidate to replace Mike Hopkins long before the Huskies actually dismissed Hopkins on March 8.
In seven years on Montlake, Hopkins coached in two NCAA Tournament games, both in the pre-COVID era.
In the past three seasons at Montana State (his alma mater) and Utah State, Sprinkle has coached in four NCAA games.
The change constitutes a clear upgrade and gives UW a chance to eventually compete for top-tier finishes in the Big Ten, where the absence of basketball blue bloods creates opportunities for consistent success that don’t necessarily exist in football.
But make no mistake: The process that led to Washington hiring Sprinkle played out on the edge.
What if Utah State hadn’t produced a regular season that exceeded even the most optimistic expectations?
What if the Aggies had won 20 games instead of 28 and qualified for the NIT, not the NCAAs?
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It could have happened: They were 11-1 in games decided by five points or less (or overtime) — an astounding record that cannot be attributed only to skill and strategy.
Alter a few bounces, change a few outcomes, and suddenly Utah State isn’t such an amazing turnaround story.
Suddenly, Sprinkle isn’t such an obvious candidate.
In that situation, maybe Dannen’s mid-search departure disrupts the process.
Maybe the Huskies are forced to scramble for candidates.
Maybe a lengthy search leads down the road to fourth and fifth options.
And Washington, after all the tumult of the past three months, is left staggered once again.
But fate had different ideas. Instead of playing out on the edge, the search landed in a sweet spot and the Huskies caught a break, finally, with Sprinkle.
Now all that’s left for UW is to hire an athletic director.
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