Husky men snap their four-game losing streak

SEATTLE — After losing four consecutive games, the Washington men’s basketball team would have been happy with any kind of victory on Sunday night.

Even this one.

If you do not believe the Huskies to be a very good basketball team, their 92-86 win over Western Michigan at Hec Edmundson Pavilion likely did little to convince you otherwise. The Broncos play in the MAC. They now have a 3-7 record. They’re among the worst defensive teams in the country, they were playing far from home and one of their players was recently arrested and charged with murder.

But at 5-5, the Huskies aren’t in a position to grouse over victories, and so they weren’t in any mood for contrition afterward.

They won, which they hadn’t done since Nov. 25.

“We had a long week of practice just waiting for this game to come,” said freshman guard Markelle Fultz, who led UW with 27 points, 10 assists and eight rebounds, taking over in the final minutes to help his team avoid yet another home loss to a mid-major opponent. “We’re just happy that we got it, but we know we’ve still got stuff to work on, just like before.”

A lot like before. UW coach Lorenzo Romar again thought his team played the right way in spurts, and again used the word “progress” during his postgame remarks. But the Huskies also gave up too many easy baskets and failed to properly contest 3-point shooters, which, in part, allowed Western Michigan guard Tucker Haymond — a Seattle native and Garfield High alumnus — to play the best game of his collegiate career.

Romar knows Haymond well, since he was “probably 7, 8 years old,” the coach said. Haymond used to attend UW’s camps. On Sunday, he made three 3-pointers in the game’s first four minutes — he had made three 3-pointers total in WMU’s first nine games this season, shooting at a 16.7 percent clip — and five in the first half, eventually finishing with a career-high 28 points.

“We obviously did a much better job in the second half of defending him,” Romar said, “but in that first half, he just got loose.”

Haymond wasn’t the only Broncos player shooting above his average. WMU shot 50.0 percent from the field and made 12-of-22 from 3-point range despite making just 29 percent of its 3-pointers in its first nine games.

The Broncos scored 24 points in the final seven minutes of the first half, trimming a 10-point deficit to a single point at the break.

“That’s something we, as a team, have to get better at,” Romar said. “Prior to that, again, I thought it was a longer stretch where we did what we were supposed to do. We’ve just got to keep adding to that, until we finally get it to where it’s complete and that’s just kind of how we play.”

WMU took a five-point lead on three different occasions in the second half, the last a 75-70 advantage with 8:52 to play. The game felt similar to Washington’s 87-85 loss last week to Nevada, a back-and-forth affair in which the Huskies could not seize control.

But Fultz made sure that didn’t happen again. He dribbled around ball screens and found open teammates for easy layups or dunks. He made jumpers. He dunked. He drove to the rim and got fouled, though he made just six of his 11 free throws. Fultz scored or assisted on 25 of UW’s final 30 points, including a short floater he made with 19 seconds left to give the Huskies a five-point lead. That was after Fultz snagged an offensive rebound off a missed dunk by Malik Dime, then got the ball back on a reset and went one-on-one for the bucket.

“I felt like I was making a lot of plays because my shot wasn’t falling at first,” said Fultz, who shot 10-of-19 from the field. “I was just playing the game the way I do to make my team win.”

He had help. Dominic Green scored 16 points, including a big 3-pointer with 3:04 to play. David Crisp added 15 points. Noah Dickerson had 12 points despite being limited by foul trouble. Dime had seven points and three blocks. His presence at the rim helped the Huskies limit WMU to just six points in the game’s final six minutes, a welcome change after the Broncos scored 22 points in the same amount of time earlier in the half.

“We knew (the Broncos) were a better team than their record indicated, and they showed that tonight,” Romar said. “But I thought we gave a collective effort as a team and made a lot of good things happen for our team tonight.”