The media day format has each coach open with an overview of his team before taking questions from the reporters.

Lorenzo Romar used the opportunity to strike two main themes that those of us who cover the team have heard quite a bit already: that this team has more upperclassment with experience and that it has more playmakers.

Romar's time at the mike actually began with a little interplay with Mike Montgomery, the former Stanford legend who is now back in the league coaching at Cal.

The coaches speak in reverse order of their team's finish the season before, so Montgomery had just finished when Romar walked to the front of the room.

"I have a letter at my mother’s house from Mike Montgomery," Romar said. "Mike Montgomery recruited me to play basketball back in the day."

At that point, Montgomery yelled from the back of the room, "I’ve always ben a lousy recruiter, Lorenzo."

Romar smiled and went on with this assessment of the 2008-09 Huskies:

"We are excited up in Seattle about this season that is about to take place.

"We feel that we have a couple of things that we haven’t had as much in the last couple of years. One of those is experience. Now, the last two years we’ve had two seniors on each team … (but) this year we have Jon Brockman, Justin Dentmon and Artem Wallace who have all played together three years and Quincy Pondexter who has played with those guys for two years. So this will be three and four years of them playing together and I think that’s really important when you put a team out there on the floor that there is some continuity with guys who have played together. With our young players and even our sophomores, the entire load of the program won’t be on their shoulders. And in times past the last couple of years we’ve probably had more of that.

"We also have more playmakers. And what I mean by that is not necessarily more point guards, but more guys that make plays. … I think we’ve lacked that the last couple of years in terms of the numbers. I think that in turn is going to make us a better basketball team this year. We’ve had some good practices. I think out team is a close-knit team. Our team is already playing together. We’re still acclimating some of the new guys in. We’re kind of looking forward to this year."