Should Jim Rosborough start soliciting bodyguards?

At Tuesday’s Huskie Club Luncheon, the men’s basketball boss told the gathering of a conversation he had with a family friend and former associate at Iowa.

“He called this morning and asked if the lynch mob had caught up with us yet,” Rosborough said.

While the Huskies’ current nine-game losing streak might not require armed protection for Rosborough and company, it is weighing heavily on the minds within the basketball program.

“I’m going to stand up here today and look you in the eye and tell you this is a very difficult time,” Rosborough said. “It would be extremely easy for me to stand up here and itemize where things are going wrong, but I’m not going to do that.

“The kids—and I’m being very honest with you here—have been very good through all of this … my heart bleeds for the kids, and my heart bleeds for my staff.”

Before the season began, Rosborough spoke of the merits of scheduling success into a program. Recent losses to Wisconsin-Parkside and Central Connecticut State, however, have left Rosborough saying “if the word embarrassed fits in with Wisconsin-Parkside, I’ll admit it.

“It’s like when you have children,” Rosborough said of the performances, “and you have an oven on, be it gas or electric, and they’re two, three or four, and you say, ‘Don’t touch it. Don’t touch it.’ Well, we told them before we played Wisconsin-Parkside, ‘Be ready, this is the game of the year for them.’ And we got burned.”

In looking at a squad built around four seniors and playing an apparently soft schedule, Rosborough should be disappointed when he says “I wish we were standing up here knocking on the door of an NIT bid,” as he did Tuesday.

But 4-15 teams aren’t sent invitations. And so, the obvious question was asked at the luncheon—how stands the men’s basketball program?

“I’ve said it before to you people—patience is not one of my great virtues,” Rosborough told the gathering. “I want things to happen today. But patience is something we need right now.

“Gerald (O’Dell) and I have talked about (where the program is going). I think we have some good kids in the program. It’s up to Gerald to evaluate beyond that. But I believe we have some very talented kids. Now, are we talking the top 50 in the nation? I don’t know. But we do have kids that were, in the area, considered very good.”