SPOKANE, Wash. - In late summer 2006, Los Angeles prep forward Justin Holiday declined scholarship offers from middle-tier schools SMU, Texas Tech and Arizona State and pledged to play for the Washington Huskies.
Nobody in the Pac-10 raised an eyebrow.
That was a few weeks after a relative unknown power forward from Connecticut, Matthew Bryan-Amaning, chose to move cross country to play for the Huskies, spurning offers from Clemson, Virginia and several other off-Broadway schools.
This made absolutely no news in Tucson or at the power schools of college hoops.
At the time Holiday and Bryan-Amaning became Huskies, Lute Olson was still in office at McKale Center, and the Wildcats had just completed a typically ballyhooed recruiting class that included Jerryd Bayless, Jamelle Horne, Zane Johnson, Laval Lucas-Perry and 7-foot Alex Jacobson of the esteemed Mater Dei basketball factory.
Life was good. There was no end in sight to Arizona's tiptoe through the basketball tulips.
But Thursday night in Washington's 85-68 victory over Arizona, the Wildcats got exactly no points from Bayless, Johnson, Horne, Lucas-Perry or Jacobson.
Holiday and Bryan-Amaning scored 40 for the Huskies.
Keep that in mind as Sean Miller continues to dig out from under the debris.
Late Thursday night, standing in a corridor outside Arizona's locker room at Hec Edmundson Pavilion, Miller spoke fondly of the once-unknown Husky recruits who now play for the kingpin of Pac-10 basketball.
"They have two players, Bryan-Amaning and Holiday, who were pieces to their success last year, and smaller pieces the year before," Miller said. "As they have been in the Washington system, they have taken it to the next level. They are both having excellent years."
It was Miller's subtle way of saying that, perhaps in the 2012-13 season, Kevin Parrom and Solomon Hill will be fourth-year seniors at Arizona and, if the basketball gods are willing, have a chance to do for the Wildcats what Holiday and Bryan-Amaning are doing for the Huskies.
Deploying four-year players at Xavier is what made Miller a coaching millionaire. The same system has made Washington coach Lorenzo Romar the most successful coach in the Pac-10.
Few people in Tucson are going to be patient during this building process, waiting for Parrom and Hill, among others, to grow with the game. But remember this: Olson didn't win his first NCAA tournament game at Arizona until his fifth season.
It's easy to forget how long the process really took.
"We've all been here for a little while and we've played with each other for so long that you kind of know when the team needs a lift, and that's when one of us has been making plays," Holiday said in the media room Thursday night.
Another Washington senior, annoying Venoy Overton, had seven points and four rebounds.
So here's Thursday's final tally of the Washington vs. Arizona seniors:
Washington: 47 points, 13 rebounds.
Arizona: 0 points, one rebound.
Miller's building project is so complex that he can't simply add on, or fill in, as Romar does in his ninth season at Washington. Indeed, Miller is likely to start over in some ways when Derrick Williams probably exits for the NBA in March.
To replace Williams, Arizona needs size and star power. It desperately needs San Diego prep center Angelo Chol to commit to the Wildcats next month, pairing him with incoming power forward Sidiki Johnson of New York. And it's imperative that incoming shooting guard Nick Johnson and point guard Josiah Turner are quickly star-level players.
And then it needs at least three of them to stay in school through 2014.
It is going to be tricky.
The Wildcats are significant underdogs tonight at Wazzu's Friel Court because Klay Thompson, Marcus Capers, DeAngelo Casto and Abe Lodwick all are juniors, all in their third full season of Pac-10 basketball. Arizona's can't come close to matching that experience. The Cougars have beaten the Wildcats by 18 and 16 points in the last two meetings in Pullman. The awe factor - that 38-game Arizona-over-Wazzu winning streak - is long forgotten.
Arizona is a basketball toddler.
Next season the mix will change. The guards will be more athletic, better shooters and, possibly, rise-to-the-occasion performers the way Washington's Isaiah Thomas is today.
Up front, although Williams is likely to be absent, the UA's bigs, especially Hill, Parrom and Jesse Perry, will continue in an attempt to evolve into Holiday and Bryan-Amaning-type producers.
In the interim, Miller is working tirelessly trying to make the Wildcats tournament-ready a year or two before it can realistically be expected.
But don't expect immediate results.
UNDERDOG HUSKIES RAISING GAMES
While Arizona was pulling in a lauded recruiting class in 2006, Washington was signing two little-known forwards who have become key pieces on the Pac-10's best team:
Justin Holiday
12.9, .443
The 6-6 Holiday, right, is third on the team in scoring and second in three-point percentage
Matthew Bryan-Amaning
15.4, 7.7
The 6-9 Bryan-Amaning, left, is second in scoring and first in rebounds
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