It’s been a while since the Washington baseball team made the NCAA tournament.

The last time that happened was 2004, when the Huskies finished 15-9 in conference play — one of their best finishes in recent history.

But the past few seasons have been remarkably similar for the Dawgs, who are often a few Pac-10 wins away from a postseason berth but just miss out by losing the past few series.

This season, though, was a little different for Washington (25-30, 13-14 Pac-10). The Huskies started out terribly and surged late, only losing momentum in the past two weeks — two weeks that proved to be extremely crucial for their postseason hopes.

“The first three series were so far down,” UW head coach Ken Knutson said. “But we got better and fought our way back into it. We turned it around.”

For Knutson, the preparation and work the team put in for its 2009 campaign brought it to one singular moment in time: the eighth inning of the UW’s second game against Arizona late in the season.

It was a game the Huskies had to win to continue on their roll, and it was necessary for their NCAA tournament aspirations. Either they prevailed or didn’t in that eighth inning.

Instead of shutting down the Wildcats one more time to head to the ninth inning with a 7-4 lead, relievers Ben Guidos, Seth Haehl, Tyler Cheney and Brian Pearl gave up six runs on five hits, virtually sealing the deal on their postseason aspirations.

“I think we had high expectations [for this season],” Knutson said. “The whole thing got down to the eighth inning in Arizona to close out that series, but we didn’t get it done.”

Things snowballed from there as the Dawgs proceeded to lose their final four games, including a sweep at the hands of tournament-bound rival Washington State.

Injuries had a lot to do with some of the UW’s early struggles; it lost regulars Pierce Rankin, Aaron Russell and pitcher Jorden Merry to minor, but critical, ailments.

The Huskies were also without the services of Sean Meehan, Ty Rasmussen, Max Kwan and pitcher Cam Nobles for the season because of major injuries and rehab.

“We never got our team together,” Knutson said. “Parts that never were there, parts that were needed to be more competitive, we just didn’t have the depth.”

But the 2009 campaign will also be remembered in other ways.

Kyle Conley followed up a strong 2008 campaign with an equally strong one this year.

The right fielder hit 19 home runs with 55 RBI and tied Ed Erickson for first on the UW’s all-time home-run list with 42 — a great accomplishment by any standards. Still, Conley could have gotten No. 43 against WSU, but he went 0-for-14 with eight strikeouts in the final three games of the season.

“Just tried a little too hard, and when that happens, you get into ruts that you can’t get out of,” Conley said. “Last year I wasn’t trying to do too much, just let things come to me — just play a little more one pitch at a time, as opposed to trying to win the game with one swing.”

For the non-veterans on the team, this season represented a way to learn from mistakes and try to recover from adversity.

Sophomore Troy Scott, one of the few power-lefty bats in the lineup, said the down year has given him and some of the younger players on the team good perspective on how to improve from here.

“This was probably the biggest learning experience,” Scott said. “Everyone coming out of high school is so successful, but you’ve got to figure out how to get through [losses] and play through it, just keep to it and learn from everything.”

Knutson said that his team didn’t grow quite as much as he had hoped it would early on, winning some games near the end of the season but then regressing to the pitching and offense that got it in such a hole to begin with by the last series against WSU.

“I thought we were on our way,” Knutson said. “But then we reverted back to some of the things we did earlier [in the season]. We stopped throwing strikes. Our bullpen failed us the last couple of weeks. We’re disappointed because we did not progress.”

Reach reporter Allen Wagner at sports@dailyuw.com.