SEATTLE – They both avoided upsets Thursday night, and now that the undercard is over, Washington and Arizona can prepare for the main event.
Hours after the Wildcats edged Washington State by a point in overtime, the Huskies held off tenacious Arizona State 90-82, setting up Saturday’s showdown between the top two teams in the Pacific-10 Conference.
Washington’s student section chanted “We want ‘Zona,” after the game, and they’ll get the Wildcats at 1 p.m. at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.
The ninth-ranked Wildcats (14-2 Pac-10, 24-4 overall) lead the 14th-ranked Huskies (12-3, 22-4) by one game in the loss column of the conference standings. A win by Washington would position it to claim its first Pac-10 title since 1985. It would also give Washington an undefeated home record for the first time since 1984. The Huskies are 14-0 this season and have won 21 in a row in Seattle.
Washington coach Lorenzo Romar said that while last season’s regular-season closing victory over No. 1 Stanford was big, it doesn’t compare to Saturday’s matchup.
“That was a bigger win than it was a big game,” Romar said. “This one is monumental.”
“We’re ready,” added guard Nate Robinson, who scored 21 points and shot 8-for-10 from the field. “We’re looking forward to having fun. It’s some guys’ last game (at home), and guys want to go out with a bang.”
Washington was 11-for-16 on 3-pointers, led by senior Tre Simmons, who tied his career high with 29 points and made six of seven 3s. Simmons scored 21 of his points in the second half despite having to leave briefly less than a minute into the half after diving for a loose ball and injuring his hip.
Arizona State (7-9, 18-10) stayed in the contest with free throw shooting. The Sun Devils were 29-for-32 from the line, and Pac-10 scoring leader Ike Diogu had 31 points (and 15 rebounds), making 17 of 18 shots from the line.
“They were like Joe Frazier,” Romar said. “They just kept coming at us and they played at a very high level.”
Robinson, who battled foul trouble all night, had combined for just 15 points in Washington’s previous two games. He picked the most important stretch of the game to make his biggest shots.
A 3-pointer by Kevin Kruger brought Arizona State to 81-78 with 2:40 to play, but Robinson answered by sneaking through the key and snagging an offensive rebound for a putback. Diogu responded with two free throws to bring it back to a three-point game. Robinson then spun to his right from the top of the key and banked in a shot with 47 seconds remaining (and two on the shot clock) to make it 85-80. Will Conroy followed with two free throws with 26 seconds to go, making it a three-possession game.
“I’d rather it be me to take that shot and miss than to blame somebody else,” Robinson said. “Coach called the play and I knew I wasn’t going to let anybody stop me.”
Arizona State coach Rob Evans said Robinson’s putback hurt his team more than the driving bucket.
“That was a key play, that’s blocking out and details,” Evans said. “I am always talking about taking care of details. At the timeout I told everyone to put a body on somebody, but those things happen.”
Before Robinson came on late, it was the Simmons show. The senior scored eight points in less than two minutes to start the game but didn’t score again in the first half. But after a pair of Diogu free throws made it 44-43 at the start of the second half, Simmons made back-to-back threes to extend it to seven. Another 3-pointer from the right wing made it 58-48 with 13:53 to play.
Simmons, who says he shoots until 11 p.m. on nights before home games, knew it was going to be a good night from the start.
“You know right away after hitting the first couple of shots,” Simmons said. “It feels like everything is going in.”
Arizona State rallied with an 8-1 run to get as close as three and trailed by as little as two with 7:34 to go before a 6-0 Washington spurt made it 75-67.
Sloppy ball handling by Washington allowed Arizona State to come back from an early first-half deficit. The Sun Devils used an 11-0 run over a 4:05 span to take a 29-24 lead on a 3-pointer from the left corner by Steve Moore.
Robinson then scored 11 points in less than two minutes, including back-to-back 3-pointers and a fastbreak bank shot after Hakeem Rollins blocked two shots on the same possession, one on Diogu, to give the Huskies the lead back at 37-32. Washington got the lead back to seven on a Bobby Jones three with 1:07 remaining before ASU got 3-pointers by Kruger and Moore to close the score to 44-41 at halftime.
Will Conroy had 13 points and seven assists and Jones scored 12 for Washington, which shot 55.4 percent but allowed 18 ASU offensive rebounds. Conroy needs two assists to break the Huskies’ single-season record and nine to break the career record.
“Give our guys a lot of credit for staying with the task at hand,” Romar said.
“They are a dangerous basketball team, not just Tre Simmons,” Evans said. “They are all good players. They have got talented athletes, they will beat you off the dribble, and they can shoot the ball. That is why they are ranked as high as they are. They have got a great basketball team.”
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