Jon Brockman appears to be "on a mission" to make the NCAAs.

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.Jon Brockman drives past Artem Wallace in UW practice.

Practice is still about about 10 days away, but basketball coach Lorenzo Romar was in mid-season form today, refusing to comment on UW's Nov. 24 game against defending national champion Kansas because he's concentrating fully on the Huskies' rare road season opener Nov. 15 at Portland.

However, a detailed talk with Romar always yields some good information, and that was certainly true today. I'll write more about some of this later, but here are some highlights:

*The Huskies will add Division-I newcomer Seattle University to their schedule in the 2009-10 season.

*This UW team will have the best mix of experience and youth that he's had since Brandon Roy's senior season ... which ended at the Sweet 16.

* Jon Brockman appears to be "on a mission" to go out the way he came in ... with an NCAA tournament appearance. (We also got a chance to talk with Brockman, who is a sleek and strong 250 pounds and says he figures he made about 11,400 free throws during the summer -- regular workouts of 500 makes before stopping, and at a rate of about 86 percent. If he and the Huskies had come anywhere near that number last season, they likely would have played in the NCAA tournament instead of the CB,um,some vowel.)

* Romar likes the influx of young guards: citing especially Tacoma's Isaiah Thomas and the outside shooting of Elston Turner. However, he cautioned that no one should overlook senior Justin Dentmon who is the only one with NCAA tournament experience, spent the summer working on his shooting, and is in the best shape of his career. (We also talked to Dentmon, and yes, he looked hyper-fit -- solid and strong, but not bulked up.)

* Romar (and Dentmon) said this team will play at a faster pace than any team since the Roy season, both offensively and defensively.

* Said Thomas is a more skilled player than Nate Robinson, but Robinson had an unequalled will to win. Thomas can shoot over and dribble past a defender. Nate somehow just gutted his way to where he needed to be -- "Joe Frasier for 40 minutes" as Romar put it. (Meanwhile, Thomas said he and Nate both play with swagger and heart. And he showed the swagger -- in a good way -- saying the goal for this season is to get the program back on its feet and into the NCAA touranment. He also said he's never played with a frontcourt guy like Brockman before, and that he thinks to will help his game greatly because Brockman must be doubled, and that will open space that Thomas knows how to fill.)

Here's The Sporting News' overview of the Huskies, who TSN picks 36th in the nation and behind UCLA, USC and Arizona State in the Pac-10.

After hearing from Coach Willingham earlier this morning we got a little time with each coordinator this afternoon.

A few highlights from each:

FROM OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR TIM LAPPANO
*The team won't be able to "bang three straight" practices like they did during the last bye week. The team will try for a mix of improvement through practices, but also allowing time for the team to heal as mid-season nears.

* Cody Bruns and Terrance Dailey both wanted to play. Lappano is an easy-going guy, great with the media and a resource of information that all Husky fans should be thankful for ... but he was clearly displeased with some of the criticism that has come after the Huskies played their 11th and 12th true freshmen of the season. (However, contrary to what he said Saturday, today he seemed to imply that true freshman receiver Anthony Boyles won't play this season.) He said Bruns and Dailey both earned their playing time, both probably would have played earlier if not for injury, and that Dailey could be in the mix for the starting job against Oregon State ... even if all the tailbacks are healthy. "These guys came here to play early," Lappano said. "That's why they're here."

* Said that Michael Gottlieb's strong play has resulted in less time and fewer catches for true freshman tight end Kavario Middleton.

* Said the teams running troubles are a combination of the offensive line not knocking defenses off the ball as well as expected, along with young running backs who need to improve their vision and their decision-making when reading blocks.

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR ED DONATELL
* Defended his defense against Arizona charges that they quit Saturday, saying "We don't have those kinds of kids here." However, he recognized the comment as an indictment, and said that he wants his defense to so obviously not quit that no one would think such a thing, and in fact where opponents would marvel at how hard the defense continued to play.

* Said he is pleased with the play of safety Nate Williams, especially considering he's lined up with different secondary personnel every week.

We had only brief phone access to coach Tyrone Willingham today. (We'll get time with some players and other coaches this afternoon, and I'll file again later with whatever comes from that.)

Willingham said there wasn't really anything new since we spoke yesterday. However, he did say that he tried to provide a little bit of a new feel for his players when they got together Sunday, for the first time since their loss at Arizona.

"I think our guys came in (Sunday) and had a nice physical workout," he said. "We tried to changed it up just a little bit to kind of give some freshness to it and not have them be in as long (Sunday) and kind of freshen up and we’ll get back to them today and try to adjust things just a little bit to keep the trend going: healthy, work and then develop."

It's an example of something I asked Willingham last week before the Arizona game: if he needs to mix up his message (or at least his presentation of that message) so that his players don't tune out from hearing the same thing each week.

"I think that with the young men that you have today, you always have to have a new message, a new presentation or a new way of presenting it," he said. "I think that’s the age we live in. I kind of call it the seven minute culture. I think it’s because TV’s commercials are every seven minutes. So you’ve got to change the message. But at the same time it does not mean that you can’t drive home the same message because no matter what you do, there are fundamentals to writing, there are fundamentals to reading, there are fundamentals to athletics. There are fundamentals to everything that we do, and we have got to learn those fundamentals so those have got to be a part of our game and you can’t get away from those. But you do have to change things up, you do have to have some variety, you do have to have some diversity. So I have to come up with a new way of saying something very consistently that catches their imagination, gets their thought process and triggers it in a different light but at the same time it’s still very fundamentally sound with what we have to do. Because no matter what you change, it’s still a game of blocking, tackling, running, catching."