The Long Way Home

Tre Simmons was playing journalist. Amid the celebration in the Washington locker room, the Husky senior swingman approached a television reporter and asked for the microphone.

Then Simmons, who usually maintains the mellowest of miens, began grilling that day’s hero, Bobby Jones.

“That was a good game, Bobby,” Simmons said after Washington defeated Pacific in an NCAA second-round game at Boise, Idaho. “It kind of reminded me of Tre Simmons. But tell me about Tre. What do you think of him?”

Jones didn’t have to respond. The answer was written all over the face of the “reporter” speaking in the third person.

From street urchin to the Sweet 16. It doesn’t get any better than this for Simmons.

As recently as his junior year of high school, Simmons, who was busy building a legend with his pickup game in Seattle’s parks, had no designs on playing college ball. He was content to run the streets until 1 or 2 in the morning, “doing bad, causing trouble,” he once told a reporter.

“It was tough,” Simmons said of his past. “I didn’t really ask my mom for anything, so I got stuff myself. I got it my way, I just got what I wanted right away. That’s just how I was living at one point. Then I finally just gathered myself and got myself together.”

The death of a grandfather served as a wake-up call, and he grew weary of a guttersnipe existence.

“I got tired of it, tired of doing the things I was doing,” Simmons said. “My mom was telling me I had to get out of [Seattle]. So that’s when I went to Odessa, and that’s when things pretty much changed.”

The kid who didn’t care to always maintain a grade-point average to stay eligible for his Pacific Northwest high school team found himself smack in the middle of Texas, playing for a junior college power that once propelled Larry Johnson to Nevada Las Vegas and the NBA.

One of Simmons’ teammates at Seattle’s Garfield High, Will Conroy, told Simmons to give Texas a chance.

“His junior year [of high school], the year he wasn’t doing anything, he lived with me,” Conroy said.

“Everybody around the city was just like, ‘Tre’s too good to not be doing anything. If anything, he should just go overseas and hoop.’ ”

At Odessa, Simmons had good, not great, numbers -- averages of 12.3 points and 5.1 rebounds. But Conroy, who kept in touch with his friend, urged Washington’s incoming coach, Lorenzo Romar, to take a look at Simmons.

A pickup game more than impressed Romar, who was hired by Washington in April 2002.

“I said, ‘You know, Tre could go to one of these smaller schools and be the guy and lead the nation in scoring,’ ” Romar said of his initial reaction. “That’s how good he is.”

Simmons left Odessa after one year, enrolled at Green River Community College in Auburn, Wash., and, buoyed by the attention paid him by Romar, averaged 29.8 points and 9.2 rebounds.

After contemplating offers from Texas, Nevada Las Vegas and Oklahoma State, Simmons rejoined his old high school teammates, Conroy and Brandon Roy, back home.

As a junior, he was Washington’s sixth man, averaging 10.8 points. This season, an early injury to Roy elevated Simmons into the Husky starting lineup and he has not looked back.

“When Tre plays well, we rarely lose,” Romar said.

Washington will need one of Simmons’ better games tonight when the No. 1-seeded Huskies (29-5) meet No. 4 Louisville (31-4) in an Albuquerque Regional semifinal.

Simmons, 6 feet 5 and 200 pounds, led the Huskies in scoring most of the season, though his current 16.2 average ranks second. But his 78 three-point baskets are a school record and he’s shooting 45.2% -- 41.5% from three-point territory -- and 86.5% from the free-throw line. He was first-team all-Pacific 10 Conference and is also averaging five rebounds and 1.6 assists.

Without him, the Huskies probably would not have won a second NCAA tournament game for only the third time in school history. And starring at home probably would not have happened had Simmons not left home after high school.

That road, he said, was “long and dreadful. I was like, ‘Man, it’s never going to end.’ But fortunately I’m here, playing on a good basketball team with my old teammates,” Simmons said.

“It’s a positive thing in my life now, playing basketball.”

Just ask the reporter.