Can Dawgs exploit ‘Cats struggles?

Well, now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

OK, maybe it wasn’t that simple. But after dealing with the pressure of not having won on the road, the Washington men’s basketball team won’t disparage Thursday’s up-and-down triumph over Arizona State in Tempe. Although the Huskies blew a huge first-half lead, they were happy enough to walk away as 66-61 victors.

Now, the Huskies will try to make it two in a row as they travel to Tucson to play struggling Arizona in a Pacific-10 Conference game crucial to both teams. The Wildcats have lost six of their past eight and are in just as much danger of missing the NCAA Tournament as Washington is.

“We need a win,” Arizona guard Jawann McClellan said after the Wildcats lost 72-66 to Washington State on Thursday. “That’s something I thought I would never say here. We have to come out Saturday and get it done.”

Washington (14-7, 4-6 Pac-10)and No. 20 Arizona (14-7, 5-5) tip off at 10:30 a.m. today at McKale Center.

The ASU win makes the Huskies 1-6 away from Hec Edmundson Pavilion, and with three consecutive victories now, the UW finds itself in a more realistic position to get an NCAA berth. But it must keep winning.

Washington still languishes in eighth place in the Pac-10, but is just a half game behind California (seventh) and a game behind Arizona (sixth). If the Huskies beat the Wildcats today and Stanford defeats California, Washington heads into a three-game homestand tied for sixth. Wins over the Bay Area schools next week could potentially put Washington into fifth place heading into a week in which it faces Washington State and Pittsburgh.

The Huskies beat Arizona in Tucson a year ago, but they haven’t won back-to-back games at McKale Center in 23 years. The Wildcats defeated the Huskies earlier this season 96-87, shooting 65 percent and making 11 of 20 3-pointers.

Since then, however, Arizona’s shooting has become as dry as Tucson’s desert. In their past eight games, the Wildcats are averaging 72 points on 42.3 percent shooting. Even worse, they’re making just 22.4 percent of their 3-pointers.

“It is definitely mental,” Arizona coach Lute Olson said. “We go through practice situations and we knock shots down. But that’s practice.”

“All of a sudden we can’t hit shots anymore,” freshman forward Chase Budinger said. “I can’t say why. There’s no explanation. It’s like a curse.”

It could be that Arizona’s depth issues are catching up to it. The Wildcats’ five starters are playing a lot of minutes each game because Arizona isn’t getting much production from of its players on the bench. The starters have struggled to find any consistency, and that could be a symptom of fatigue setting in. No starter has shot better than 45 percent in the past eight games and none are shooting better than 30 percent on 3-pointers.

Sophomore forward Marcus Williams continues to be productive, averaging 17.9 points in the past eight games, but he’s made just 17 percent of his 3-pointers while coming back from a badly sprained ankle. Point guard Mustafa Shakur (14.5 points, 43.6 percent from the field, 28.6 percent on threes) and Budinger (13.5 points, 44 percent from the field, 22.6 on 3-pointers) continue to score, but are cold from the outside. Senior Ivan Radenovic has seen his production drop, averaging 13.1 points in the eight-game stretch but shooting just 38 percent.

But the biggest struggles have been by McClellan, who had 22 points and shot 6-for-9 on 3-pointers in the win over Washington. In the past eight games, he’s scoring 7.5 points and shooting 33 percent from the field, including 20 percent on 3-pointers.

“They’re all wide-open looks,” McClellan said. “I can’t tell you why we’re not hitting the shots, we hit them in practice.”

Today’s victor may have an inside track on the final Pac-10 spot in the NCAA Tournament, and Williams, a product of Seattle’s Roosevelt High School, said it doesn’t help to dwell on what’s happened to this point.

“The only choice you have is to move forward and realize there are still games left to be played,” Williams said.