Washington’s loss to Portland Saturday put somewhat of a damper on the team’s preseason fervor.

There’s no time to dwell on it, though. The Huskies host Cleveland State today in the opening round of the O’Reilly Auto Parts CBE Classic, the Huskies’ first regular season home game and a chance to recuperate from last week’s season-opening 80-74 upset at the hands of UP.

“I think our guys have really, really focused, put it that way,” UW coach Lorenzo Romar said. “I think our attention right now to what’s really important is at a really high level.”

UW (0-1) turned the ball over 23 times in Saturday’s loss, a problem that can easily be attributed to youth at the guard position, something magnified when playing on the road.

But they’re not panicking; most players are ready to label the loss as an aberration and shift their focus to this week’s action.

Washington plays Florida International Thursday, then travels to Kansas City, Mo. to face Kansas Monday in the CBE semifinals, from which the Huskies will automatically advance to win or lose as part of the tournament’s format.

“I think our guys for the most part are pretty resilient,” said senior forward Jon Brockman, who scored a game-high 30 points and grabbed 14 rebounds in the loss. “They bounced back yesterday, they had a good practice. I think we just need to learn from this. It was our first game, it’s not 10 games in a row, but we’re going to be at our 10th game before we know it and if we continue to let this happen we’re going to be in a lot of trouble. So we’ve got to turn this around and change it right now.”

Cleveland State was picked by the media to win the Horizon League and returns four starters from last year’s squad, including forward J’Nathan Bullock, who Romar made particular note of.

“He is powerful,” Romar said. “He’s strong. [If you put a guy his height on him], he’ll punish him inside, you put a bigger guy on him to combat his strength, then he goes around them. He’s a tough, tough match-up.”

Reach reporter Christian Caple at sports@dailyuw.com.