Washington Brings Home Quincy Pondexter as Assistant Coach

The Washington Huskies have brought back a familiar face to fill their remaining assistant coaching vacancy by hiring Quincy Pondexter. The former Husky star joins Wyking Jones as new additions to the staff after Dave Rice and Cameron Dollar left the program.

This will be the first college coaching position for Q-Pon after a solid 9 year NBA career. He was drafted in the 1st round by Oklahoma City but was traded to New Orleans and then again to Memphis after his first season. He appeared in 15 playoff games averaging 9 points on 45% 3-pt shooting for a Memphis team desperate for floor spacing in the most prominent moments of his career. His career also included stops back with New Orleans, with Chicago, and the Spurs. In the midst of that time Pondexter required multiple knee surgeries and contracted MRSA which almost killed him as he went a full 2 years in between playing in the NBA.

Since his playing career ended (and even before then) Pondexter became involved with the high school basketball scene and started his own AAU team in 2015, California United which later merged with Vegas Elite. The Fresno native has been involved with a number of the top prospects in the San Joaquin Valley area and should be able to help with recruiting California which has dropped off under Mike Hopkins.

While with the Huskies Pondexter was an elite recruit who showed tantalizing talent but for his first few years didn’t live up to it. Then as a senior Pondexter finally took the leap and averaged 19.3 points and 7.4 rebounds per game to help lead Washington to the Sweet 16 alongside Isaiah Thomas. Pondexter hit the game winning shot in the closing seconds against Marquette in the 1st round to kick off that tournament for the Dawgs.

Given the uncertainty around Mike Hopkins’ future it shouldn’t be surprising that he had to take a bit of a risk with his final assistant hire. Pondexter is young and hungry and brings an ability to say that he knows what it takes to get a player to the NBA. He’s a Dawg through and through and it wouldn’t be difficult to see him become a really great recruiter. But there are a lot of unknowns as ideally you would have liked to see him spend some time at a lower level college program before making the leap to the Pac-12.

Welcome back Quincy and here’s to hoping this is the first major step in a long and successful coaching career for you!