Isaiah Thomas hadn’t heard he was named Pac-10 Freshman of the Year yet. Not until assistant coach Cameron Dollar sent him a text message.

“Congrats,” the message read.

“I was like ‘on what?’ I didn’t really know about it,” Thomas said.

When he did find out, it wasn’t exactly an unexpected moment. Leapfrogging past more touted freshmen like UCLA’s Jrue Holiday and USC’s DeMar DeRozan, who were preseason favorites for the award, couldn’t catch him by surprise.

Not after the two years he spent at a Connecticut prep school to get his grades up. Not after the 6 a.m. workouts he endured last summer with the rest of this year’s freshman class.

“All along, I was thinking I was going to be [Freshman of the Year], not to sound cocky or whatnot,” he said.

Yet Thomas was surprised when he later found his name alongside four others chosen for the All-Pac-10 second team. Not only surprised, but hurt.

“That’s another doubt that people got in me, they put me on the second team,” he said. “But it’s nothing. We won the Pac-10, so that’s all that matters.”

For No. 13 Washington, winning its first outright conference championship since 1953 required a certain level of personal sacrifice from each of its 13 players. For the once-trigger-happy Thomas, who scored 51 points in a high-school tournament game, it meant doing something he’d never been asked to do before — shoot less. The result is a squad more cohesive than even the teams led by Brandon Roy and Nate Robinson, said coach Lorenzo Romar.

“The beauty of this all to me, when you talk about the awards, is something that we constantly preach,” Romar said. “We got one Player of the Week: [Jon Brockman], but yet we have all of these guys with awards.”

Romar was named Pac-10 Coach of the Year. Brockman and Justin Dentmon were named to the first team all-conference. Dentmon also captured the Pac-10 Most Improved Player award.

“I think it really speaks to what happens when no one cares who gets the credit,” Romar said.

Not that this version of the Washington Huskies always played this way. After Kansas clobbered them 73-54 in front of a national TV audience in late November, a game in which Thomas made just six of a game-high 16 shots, UW players organized their own meeting. They realized they were approaching the game as individuals and not as a team.

Thomas knew what he needed to do differently the next night against Florida and in the future.

“‘All right, for this team to be the best, I need to be able to distribute the ball and at times I need to be able to pick my spots,’” Romar said of Thomas’ mindset.

Thomas’ nine assists kept the Huskies in it against the Gators despite losing 86-84. Thomas took just nine shots, making five of them. The Huskies would go on to win 13 of their next 14 games.

“[The game against Florida] that was a big one,” Thomas said. “Just changed the whole season knowing I don’t got to go out and score 25 to 30, even though I can do that. But I don’t got to do that for us to win.”