After a pair of preseason defeats, Washington Huskies coach Danny Sprinkle has enough notes on his team heading into the start of the 2026-27 season.
The third-year coach saw his remade roster lose by a combined 24 points—an 18-point road loss at Boise State and a 4-point loss Sunday afternoon at Alaska Airlines Arena to cross-state foe Washington State—in two exhibition contests in the lead-up to the Huskies' November 2 home opener against Colgate.
Between the two Pacific Northwest tuneups, the only commonality, aside from coming out on the losing end, was the performance of fourth-year forward LeJuan Watts, a Texas Tech transfer who began his career at Eastern Washington before spending one year in Pullman with the Cougars in 2024-25, being the Huskies' go-to scorer.
Watts, a 6-foot-6 Fresno, California native, finished with a game-high 28 points on 7-of-12 shooting from the floor in UW's 84-80 loss to WSU on Sunday, 11 points more than the next closest Huskies' scorer, third-year center Lathan Sommerville, who put up 19 points, 4 rebounds, a block, and a steal in 29 minutes against the Cougars.
The former EWU and WSU starter scored 16 points in UW's 108-91 loss at Boise State on October 17, which tied incoming Nevada transfer guard Tayshawn Comer with a team-high.
Watts added 9 rebounds and 3 assists with 4 turnovers in the double-digit road defeat nearly two weeks ago, while Comer also added 3 assists, but the former Nevada ball-handler didn't have a turnover in 26 minutes of action in the City of Trees.
Real thing starts Nov. 2. pic.twitter.com/NOIs1xZTlr
— Washington Men's Basketball (@UW_MBB) October 25, 2026
Sprinkle highlighted both Sommerville and Watts, along with second-year forward Nikola Dzepina, who added 16 points and 12 rebounds off the bench in 30 minutes of action in the 4-point exhibition loss Sunday, as three players who made a significant impact in UW's final preseason contest.
"We'll start playing LeJuan there a little bit too, because you can see how capable he is with the basketball," Sprinkle said after the Huskies' loss to the Cougars, when asked about what his point guard rotation could look like in the absence of veteran San Francisco transfer Ryan Beasley due to a concussion.
Although UW will benefit from having a traditional, ball-dominant facilitator in Beasley when he returns to full game action, the benefit of Watts will prove invaluable throughout the upcoming 2026-27 season, in a similar fashion as ex-forward Great Osobor did for Sprinkle at all three stops: Montana State, Utah State, and UW, when it came to the big man being able to bring the ball up the court and spark Sprinkle's offenses.
"It's huge right now," Sprinkle said of Watts' impact. "Because he's one of the only guys that can touch the paint and make plays, and when he touches the paint, he's actually looking for other guys. We have some guys that are driving the paint, and all they see is the orange rim."
Sprinkle picked Boise State and WSU as preseason opponents for UW for their contrasting styles of play on the court, which should give the Huskies' roster enough to work off of before the team hits the court next month for the real deal.
"A ton," Sprinkle said of what he learned from the two games. "That's why you play the exhibition games, and I wanted to play two different styles. Boise, playing fast. Washington State will play fast, to an extent, but they're also very disciplined, and they know what they're looking for, mismatch-wise, every possession. So it's good for us to see. It challenged our post defense and our staggered defense tonight. But there's a ton that you learn from these exhibition games."
In the two losses, Sprinkle saw his team out-rebounded in both preseason defeats—by one to the Broncos and eight against the Cougars on Sunday—the details and small margins are where the third-year coach has his eyes focused as the program fine-tunes itself before next month's opener at Hec Edmondson Pavilion.
Whether Watts stands to become the Osobor-esque leading scorer, or if he proves to be a more effective key cog with a better team dynamic this season, remains to be seen. At least there's a promising, versatile starter at Sprinkle's disposal.
This article originally appeared on Huskies Wire: Danny Sprinkle Reflects on Washington Basketball's Preseason Defeats