Washington men rolling, but clouds loom on horizon

In the past couple of seasons, it has looked like it would take an act of Congress to get a Pac-10 team into the men's Associated Press Top 25. At the moment, No. 17 Washington is the conference's only ranked team.

The Huskies, who visit the Bay Area to play Stanford tonight and Cal Sunday night, are 12-3 overall and 4-0 in the Pac-10. Their three losses have come at the hands of Kentucky, Michigan State and Texas A&M;, all ranked in the Top 25.

Under coach Lorenzo Romar, the ex-Warrior, the explosive Huskies are averaging 89 points and outscoring their opposition by an average of 21 points, 11 better than the next best Pac-10 team, Arizona.

"We're a better three-point shooting team than we've been," Romar said this week on a Pac-10 conference call. "We're a better defensive team, and that helps."

Guard Isaiah Thomas averages 16 points and leads the conference in assists with 4.8 per game. Matthew Bryan-Amaning averages 15.3 points and Justin Holiday 11.5. Guard Venoy Overton, third in the Pac-10 in assists (4.2), took over in the starting lineup for Abdul Gaddy, who sustained a season-ending knee injury last week.

More adversity arose this week when it was confirmed that an unnamed Husky is under a sexual-assault investigation in Seattle over an incident involving a 16-year-old girl. Romar said the allegation is being taken seriously, but he added, "There is not nearly enough information at this point to determine what is going to be done here."

This article appeared on page B - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle