2025-26 Washington Huskies basketball season preview

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The 2025-’26 ‘BTPowerhouse Season Preview’ series will take an in-depth look at all 18 teams in the Big Ten heading into the 2025-’26 season with analysis on each program’s previous season, roster overhaul, and top storylines. Each post will also include predictions on each team’s postseason potential.

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Last Season

Danny Sprinkle’s first season in Seattle certainly could’ve been better, but most coaches get a mulligan in year one at a job and there wasn’t all that much for him to build off of at Washington.

The Huskies finished 13-18 and 4-16 in the Big Ten, Sprinkle’s first season under .500 as a head coach. He went 16-15 in his first season at Montana and 28-7 during his lone year at Utah State. Washington finished at No. 104 in KenPom and won a single game after Valentine’s Day, failing to qualify for Big Ten Tournament play under the old cutoff format.

There’s reason to believe 2025-26 will be an improvement in Seattle.

Roster Overlook

Understandably, Washington experienced a fair amount of roster attrition when the season ended with some players simply running out of eligibility and others electing to enter the transfer portal and depart from the program.

Departures

  • F Great Osobor
  • F Tyler Harris
  • G Mekhi Mason
  • G DJ Davis
  • G Luis Kortright

And a handful of others.

Sprinkle and co. were able to retain rising sophomore guard Zoom Diallo and rising graduate center Franck Kepnang, adding several players through the portal and a four-member freshman class.

Transfers

  • G Desmond Claude (Senior, USC)
  • G Wesley Yates III (Sophomore, USC)
  • G Quimari Peterson (Senior, East Tennessee State)
  • F Jacob Ognacevic (Senior, Lipscomb) – OUT for ~3 months
  • C Lathan Sommerville (Sophomore, Rutgers)
  • F Bryson Tucker (Sophomore, Indiana)
  • F Christian Nitu (Sophomore, Florida State)
  • F Mady Traore (Junior, Frank Phillips College) – OUT for the season

Freshmen

  • 4-star G JJ Mandaquit
  • 4-star G Courtland Muldrew
  • 4-star F Jasir Rencher
  • 3-star F Hannes Steinbach (international)

Washington’s starting five in an exhibition against UNLV in October was:

  • JJ Mandaquit
  • Wesley Yates III
  • Bryson Tucker
  • Hannes Steinbach
  • Franck Kepnang

With a pretty big asterisk in that the team was without Patterson, Claude, Diallo and Nitu on top of Ognacevic and Traore. It remains to be seen what the healthy starters could like like but I’d imagine it’d include Claude, perhaps Diallo.

Steinbach looked, frankly, ridiculously good against UNLV, so he’s a major breakout candidate to keep an eye on.

Schedule

Non-Conference

  • 11/3 vs Arkansas Pine Bluff
  • 11/6 vs Denver
  • 11/9 at Baylor
  • 11/14 at Washington State
  • 11/18 vs Southern
  • 11/27 vs Nevada (Palm Springs)
  • 12/13 vs Southern Utah
  • 12/19 vs Seattle (Climate Pledge Arena)
  • 12/22 vs San Diego
  • 12/29 vs Utah

Yeah this non-conference slate isn’t exactly inspiring. I’m glad Washington is keeping up its series against Washington State and props to them for scheduling a true road game at Baylor, but the bulk of this slate is very chalky. Gotta bank on a good year in conference play to make it to March.

Big Ten

  • 12/3 vs UCLA
  • 12/6 at USC
  • 1/4 at Indiana
  • 1/7 at Purdue
  • 1/11 vs Ohio State
  • 1/14 vs Michigan
  • 1/17 vs Michigan State
  • 1/21 at Nebraska
  • 1/25 vs Oregon
  • 1/29 at Illinois
  • 1/31 at Northwestern
  • 2/4 vs Iowa
  • 2/7 at UCLA
  • 2/11 vs Penn State
  • 2/14 vs Minnesota
  • 2/21 at Maryland
  • 2/21 at Rutgers
  • 2/28 vs Wisconsin
  • 3/4 vs USC
  • 3/7 at Oregon

Things could get weird to open the season. UCLA should be good and a road matchup at USC could get interesting. After that is the wild card that is Indiana and a slate at Purdue and home against Ohio State, Michigan and Michigan State. I’m not saying it’ll happen but there’s a chance Washington stumbles a bit out of the gate, which wouldn’t be great given the aforementioned non-conference.

Biggest Obstacle

Like just about every team that’s almost entirely composed of transfers and freshmen, the biggest challenge ahead for Washington is whether or not all of these players work well together. It’s the second straight season the Huskies have had to do that and the last time didn’t work out all that great. This group, however, looks better on paper and should make things a bit interesting in the Big Ten.

Realistic Expectations

Washington should improve. Should.

That’d be great! For the program, for the conference etc. But I’m not sure what this group’s ceiling is gonna be in the conference. There’s enough here to be interesting, maybe make the tourney, but we’ll see.

Big Ten Prediction: 14th place

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