SEATTLE — And ... we have a winner.

Well, the Washington men's basketball program has a winner. And I don't mean simply that the university picked a new coach to replace Mike Hopkins a few weeks after his firing.

I just mean that Danny Sprinkle — the new head Husky — wins everywhere he goes. That's what the university should have been looking for seven years ago, but this time it did it right.

"Did it right," mind you, is different from "got it right." Nobody knows how well Sprinkle, who took Utah State to the round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament this season, will fare at UW.

Remember Jody Wynn, who led Long Beach State to three consecutive seasons of at least 22 wins and an NCAA Tournament appearance in 2017? She went 8-43 in the Pac-12 in her three years as the Huskies' women's basketball coach.

But Sprinkle's résumé has more sparkle than Wynn's did. When he took over Montana State's program in 2019, the Bobcats hadn't reached the NCAA Tournament in 23 years. By 2022 they were a 14 seed in the tourney after a 27-8 season and made the dance again in 2023. That was enough to convince the Utah State brass to bring Sprinkle aboard.

Still, in 2023 Utah State was picked to finish ninth in the Mountain West media poll. It ended up finishing first with a 14-4 conference record (28-7 overall) and rose to as high as No. 16 in The Associated Press poll.

Purdue eventually bounced the Aggies from the NCAA Tournament in the round of 32 via a 39-point rout. But the coaching job Sprinkle demonstrated with a group of players few perceived as particularly talented shot him to the top of Washington's list.

That coaching job was something Hopkins, who took over on Montlake after Lorenzo Romar was fired in 2017, never quite proved he could do. Revered as he was as an assistant at Syracuse — to the point that he helped coach Team USA in various years — he never showed he could build something from scratch.

I once made the analogy that him taking UW to the NCAA Tournament in 2019 was akin to winning Best Adapted Screenplay, in that he squeezed a Pac-12 title out of Romar's recruits. He just couldn't write his own script despite getting several seasons to do so.

Sprinkle is different, though. Not only did he bring back three COVID-eligible seniors for the 2021-22 season at Montana State, he constructed a Big Sky powerhouse with new recruits — a powerhouse that again went to the NCAA Tournament this season despite Sprinkle moving on. Then he led Utah State to its first stand-alone Mountain West title since entering the conference in 2013.

This is why a source told Seattle Times Huskies basketball writer Percy Allen that "It's his job if he wants it" before any agreement was made with Sprinkle. Can't hurt that Sprinkle has ties to the region. He was born in Pullman, he coached and played at Montana State, and his father, Bill, played football at UW.

Yes, there were some Washington players who would have liked to have seen assistant Will Conroy take over the program. As Washington freshman Wesley Yates III posted on X last week: "Would love coach Conroy and Quincy (Pondexter) to take over this program and lead us into the Big Ten."

And perhaps the universally respected Conroy would have had success in that role. But that would have meant the Washington brass following the same blueprint the university did with Hopkins years earlier. Sprinkle has shown he can win at multiple schools as the top man. That's what this program needs right now.

The past eight months or so have been among the wildest in UW athletics history. In August of last year, the announcement came that the school would be leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten.

A few weeks later, athletic director Jen Cohen bolted for the same job at USC. A few months after that, the football team made a run to the national championship game, only to have two-year coach Kalen DeBoer leave for Alabama after the loss to Michigan. Earlier this month, just after firing Hopkins, Cohen's replacement, Troy Dannen — who hired Jedd Fisch as the Huskies' new football coach, accepted a job as Nebraska's AD. And now there's Sprinkle.

Not sure stability has ever been so desired in Washington's athletic department. But Sprinkle could help provide it.

The man wins. And for now, this proven winner looks like a victory for the Huskies.

(c)2024 The Seattle Times Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.