Travel-Tested Huskies Host Hawkeyes At Home

The University of Washington basketball team will entertain Iowa on Wednesday night and, hopefully for the Huskies' sake, they won't have any trouble getting to Alaska Airlines Arena for the Big Ten Conference match-up.

Lately, Danny Sprinkle's guys have had an incredible amount of difficulty traveling to where they need to go.

Two weeks ago, the Huskies got dumped in Missoula, Montana -- which was Sprinkle's rival college town when he was at Montana State -- on the way back from a game at Nebraska.

This past weekend, they woke up on a chartered flight that was diverted to Portland while trying to return home from a game at Northwestern and the Chicago area.

It's been nothing but Planes, Trains and Automobiles for the Huskies.

"We were all kind of sleeping at the end and we land and [the pilot] walks out and says, 'I've got some bad news, we're in Portland,' " Sprinkle said. "What are you talking about?'"

The Huskies, who alternate flying commercial and privately on road trips, were diverted to Oregon for some unknown reason, presumably weather.

It was so late at the time, arrangements were made for them to stay in an airport-area hotel. They next chartered a bus to transport them to Seattle and got home at 5 or 6 p.m. on a Sunday night. The pilots were required to adhere to a 10-hour rest gap.

Returning from Nebraska, the Huskies were diverted on a charter flight to Missoula, landing at 2:30 a.m. on a Thursday. The team sat on the airfield for another two hours before disembarking the plane and checking into a hotel.

They got on a series of Alaska Airlines flights and got home about 7 p.m. that night, according to Sprinkle.