Washington coach Tia Jackson believes her team is progressing in the right direction, but so far, the Huskies have nothing to show for it.

However, the UW women’s basketball team (5-12, 1-6 Pac-10) could break their six-game skid — and pick up their first win since their Pac-10 opener — against Arizona (7-11, 0-7 Pac-10) tonight.

“I feel like, especially these next few games, we’re going to break through; it’s way past due,” freshman guard Kristi Kingma told reporters.

Although Arizona is an opponent likely to lose to the Huskies this weekend considering their 0-7 Pac-10 mark, Jackson is wary of the Wildcats’ hunger for a win.

“They’re going to come in here and believe that we’re a team they could beat, and we’ve got to do everything we can to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Jackson said.

The Huskies, too, hope to pick up a win this weekend, after keeping up with the Los Angeles schools last week but ultimately losing both games by single-digit margins.

“After the UCLA game, in the locker room, everyone was just exhausted,” Kingma said. “Our brains were tired, our legs were tired, everyone was just so beat down. That’s how we want to feel after every game because we knew that we didn’t have anything left to give.”

But a loss is a loss, and the Huskies are through with moral victories.

“We just need to get this monkey off our backs,” junior guard Sami Whitcomb told reporters, adding that not being able to pick up a win was “tough to swallow.”

The Huskies’ bid for respectability may not be possible without Kingma, whose return from injury made an immediate impact on the Husky lineup.

“She changes the dynamic of our team when she’s out there on the court,” Whitcomb said of Kingma. “People have to respect her, they have to guard her, and that opens up so much for other players on the floor.”

Jackson compared Kingma’s impact to that of Jon Brockman and Justin Dentmon on the Husky men’s team, calling her a natural leader.

But she also said Kingma is not yet back to full health and is at about 75 percent.

Kingma herself said she hasn’t gone through a full practice.

And Kingma’s is not the only injury hampering the Huskies.

“Most teams play roughly eight players; I would love to say we have a top eight right now but I can’t say that because I don’t know who’s going to be healthy today for practice,” Jackson said.

Freshman forward Liz Lay has been in and out of the lineup for several weeks. Jackson said Lay sometimes aggravates her knee during practice and is forced into limited action.

But relief may be coming in the form of a four-game homestand, and the Huskies will take all the breaks they can get.

“This is kind of a nice deal,” Jackson said of the homestand. “Especially when we’re kind of on the upward trend as far as our progression on the floor and our progression in the health department.”

Reach reporter Honsen Lin at sports@dailyuw.com.