Of course, where do you put the emphasis in that sentence? “The Future LOOKS Bright” vs. “The Future Looks BRIGHT” can make all the difference.

The Huskies took care of business against a bad Cal team on Saturday. After a sluggish start – where the Huskies started off shooting 1/14 – we managed to take a 1-point lead at half, as our shooting woes reversed. That lead ballooned out to an eventual 19-point victory, which was just what this team needed as we embark on a tough trip to Oregon this week.

The victory makes us 5-0 in conference, half a game ahead of Arizona, and 14-4 overall. As I wrote about on Friday, if we break up the season into 6-game chunks, the Huskies need to go 3-3, then 5-1, to properly align themselves for an At Large bid. I would honestly settle for going 1-1 the next three weeks, if it’s all the same to you. Anything above and beyond that would be all the better.

But, that’s not the only reason why the future looks bright. Over the weekend, the Huskies got a verbal committment from a 5-star big man (Isaiah Stewart), a guy rated 6th in the country heading into 2019. There’s a lot of good information here, so go read all about it! The Huskies now have a Top 20 recruiting class for next year, and that could very well jump up, depending on where the local kid decides to go. As it is, we’ve got three guys coming in, two in the Top 100 (Stewart and RaeQuan Battle) and another guy in the Top 300 (Marcus Tsohonis). That’s on top of transfer Quade Green, who will be eligible to start halfway into next season (I don’t get how that works; why can’t he just sit out the rest of this year and play from the start next season?).

That’s A LOT of talent coming into the program! Sure, the Big Three (Crisp, Dickerson, Thybulle) will be leaving after this season (maybe the Big Four if Nowell decides to leave early), but could we be talking about a team that might actually improve over whatever this 2018/2019 team does? That’s certainly on the table, if the new guys can gel quickly.

Of course, what’s also on the table is something akin to what we saw out of a lot of those later Romar seasons: Freshman studs playing hero ball, en route to an N.I.T. finish, with our NBA hopefuls sitting out late in the season to preserve their bodies for the Draft.

Look, I just don’t trust 5-star guys around these parts. We’re not Duke, we’re not Kentucky. We generally don’t have sufficient depth to pair with those highly-rated guys to make deep runs in the NCAA Tournament. One & Done players look out for themselves and that’s it. Washington is as good a place as any to showcase one stud’s amazing talent – Markelle Fultz is a testament to that – but we don’t matter on the national scene like those other programs.

I hope I’m proven wrong, and this is the beginning of something huge. I’d like to believe Washington can be a powerhouse, but I’ve been burned so many times before. At this point, I’ll believe it when I actually see it.