TEMPE, Ariz — Outside an upbeat locker room, standing against a yellow wall inside Wells Fargo Arena’s dingy concourse, Washington players spoke of progress in their pursuit of greater defensive performance.
They said the same things their coach, Lorenzo Romar, has been insisting recently: Statistics and scores aside, the Huskies are getting better. Really.
So on Thursday night, the Huskies left here after a surprising 76-65 victory over Arizona State that wasn’t nearly so close, UW at one point leading by 24 points in the second half before letting walk-ons close the deal.
Really.
“I thought tonight was one of the first times all year that we came out and played like our identity was on the defensive end,” Romar said before the Huskies boarded a bus that would take them to Tucson for Saturday’s game against No. 1 Arizona. “That was our identity. And that’s something we’ve been trying to build and build, and hadn’t quite got there. And I thought on the road, we did a good job of that.”
They did. ASU (11-3, 0-1 in Pacific-12 Conference) made just nine of its 31 field-goal attempts in the first half — that’s a clip of 29 percent — and the Huskies (9-5, 1-0) used their myriad defensive stops to key a strong transition game that led to quick baskets.
Those baskets also led to a 30-7 run to finish the first half, UW entering halftime with a 40-23 lead that had to come as a surprise to approximately every one of the 5,788 in attendance.
“We played defense. That was the main thing,” said senior guard C.J. Wilcox, who led five UW players in double-figures with 17 points. “We guarded them as a team. Most of the game we were on the same page, and we were able to get up on them and keep our foot down for the rest of the game.”
ASU guard Jahii Carson, the Pac-12’s fourth-leading scorer, was never a factor. He scored 10 of his team-high 15 points in the first half, but shot just 5-for-12 from the field and committed four turnovers.
It took a committee to force those numbers.
“It’s not 1-on-1 with him. You’re going to lose that battle,” Romar said. “You have to guard him as a team. And we just tried to, for lack of a better way to put it, zone up off the ball when he had the ball.”
Meanwhile, the Huskies attacked in transition, a pursuit led by freshman point guard Nigel Williams-Goss, who scored 12 points and keyed a few breaks himself by grabbing seven rebounds.
“When we were locked in defensively like that, we were getting stops and it allows us to get out in transition,” Williams-Goss said. “I think that was the biggest key to our offensive success, was being locked in defensively.”
Sophomore guard Andrew Andrews scored 14 points. Forward Perris Blackwell scored 10 in 22 minutes. Freshman guard Darin Johnson, who played just two minutes in UW’s Sunday victory over Hartford, came off the bench to score 10 points and grab five rebounds.
Even Arizona State’s most impressive scoring run did little to mitigate the first-half lead the Huskies accumulated. A quick 9-0 burst cut UW’s lead to 44-34 with 16:23 to play in the game. Romar called timeout to settle the Huskies down, telling them that a few missed shots wouldn’t derail them if they kept guarding as they had in the first half.
“Keep defending,” he said. “If we keep defending, (shots) will go down and we’ll be OK.”
He was right. Washington responded with an 8-0 run, keyed by 3-pointers from Andrews and Wilcox, and the margin wasn’t trimmed below 15 points until garbage time.
After a shaky non-conference schedule during which the Huskies beat nobody of note, they couldn’t have asked for a better start to Pac-12 play. The Sun Devils, whom the Huskies have now defeated eight consecutive times, were favored to win by 11 points.
“We’re starting to come together,” Romar said he told his players before the game. “Let’s play like it. This was maybe a culmination of us getting better and better here and there.”
“It just shows the progress that we’ve made over this non-conference season,” Wilcox said. “It just shows we’re not as bad as people may say.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
