When Donovan Dent moved from New Mexico to UCLA, the coveted point guard declared it was his intention all along to play for a winner.

While plenty of money no doubt changed hands to help guide Dent's decision, the Bruins also were able to point to the 11 national championship banners hanging throughout Pauley Pavilion to get their man.

In Montlake, Danny Sprinkle is finding out University of Washington basketball is an exceedingly hard sell, not just now, but for much of its existence.

Oh, there have been the momentary flurries of success when the extraordinarily talented Brandon Roy, Nate Robinson, Isaiah Thomas and Jaylen Nowell, all homegrown players, chose to stay put and won conference championships and earned NCAA Tournament bids.

Yet the downside is the UW is a football school and Sprinkle knows this -- because his father, Bill, was a 1960s era Husky defensive back -- and that's where the priorities lie.

Consider that over the past decade, the Huskies have suffered through four losing seasons -- including an incredibly inept 5-21 showing in 2020 -- and two others that broke even. Even two of the winning seasons ended up just 17-15.

Dent never would have considered the UW for that reason. Yet there's more, much more that would cause someone to pause.

An even bigger obstacle is the NCAA Tournament -- the Huskies have been involved in it just once in the past 14 seasons. They've won only one March Madness game in all that time. Now that's true madness.

Finally, the UW (13-18 overall, 4-16 conference) finished dead last in the Big Ten Conference standings as a first-year member with Sprinkle as coach. Eighteenth to be exact. Two full games behind the nearest team.

Sprinkle has to do a lot of tap-dancing if any of that comes up for discussion. The Huskies are a real hard sell.

Of previous UW basketball coaches, Lorenzo Romar finished up a fairly productive 15-season run by going 9-22 with a team built around the eventual NBA No. 1 overall draft pick in Markelle Fultz and was fired.

Bob Bender had five losing seasons in nine years in charge. Lynn Nance had no winning seasons in four years as coach. Bender and Mike Hopkins coached the two worst seasons in program history at 5-22 and 5-21, respectively.

Compound those built-in obstacles by the fact that Sprinkle admitted he recruited badly in putting together his first UW team and bringing in multiple players who simply weren't good enough, committed enough to the cause or, as it turns out, loyal to him at all.

Eleven of his 13 scholarship players have moved on after using up their eligibility, medically retiring or entering the transfer portal. Add to that the departure of the once touted Dominique Diomande, who was relegated to walk-on status after arriving at midseason, and who immediately was scooped up by BYU.

Only Zoom Diallo and Franck Kepnang return from Sprinkle's first Husky roster, with eight new players signed or committed for next season so far.

High school recruitsare Niko Bundalo, JJ Mandiquit and Courtland Muldrew. Others are JC transfer Mady Traore, Rutgers transfer Lathan Sommerville, East Tennessee State transfer Quimari Peterson, Lipscomb transfer Jacob Ognacevic and German import Hannes Steinbach.

With 15 scholarships permissible going forward, the UW still have room for five more players.

As the Huskies' 13-18 season came to a close, leaving Sprinkle's team alone in last place in the extra competitive Big Ten, the coach acknowledged he knew his first year on the job was going to be rough.

Sprinkle has a daunting challenge ahead of him in overcoming decades of UW basketball neglect while convincing players that he can change recent trends, especially in a Big Ten that does no favors for anyone.