CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There was a time when Terrence Ross thought he might have plenty of opportunities to showcase his talent in this part of the country. A one-time Maryland recruit, the Portland native might have spent two or three games this season locking horns with star freshman Harrison Barnes of the University of North Carolina men’s basketball team.
But after backing out of his original commitment and deciding instead to play at Washington, Ross might only get limited chances to play in these parts.
Ross certainly made the most of his opportunity Sunday afternoon.
The 6-foot-6 freshman bounced back from a scoreless, 0-for-5 shooting performance in Friday’s win over Georgia to score a team-high 19 points in Sunday’s loss to the Tar Heels. There were times when Ross carried UW’s offense, and matched Barnes’s impressive scoring prowess, Sunday before the Huskies bowed out of the NCAA tournament by way of an 86-83 loss to North Carolina.
“He just went out there and played basketball like he’s always done — and he did a great job of it,” teammate Isaiah Thomas said. “He almost helped us win.”
Playing a limited role for the Huskies most of this season, Ross was so far out of the national spotlight that shadows cast by star freshmen like Barnes, Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger and Kentucky’s Brandon Knight never would have found him. By the end of the regular season, he was no longer part of the Huskies’ rotation.
But the freshman opened some eyes, at least on the West Coast, when he took advantage of a sudden starting job and hit double digits in all three games of the Pac-10 tournament.
Ross followed up that weekend with a dud in UW’s NCAA tournament opener. He was in the starting lineup but failed to score a single point and made a few mistakes on the defensive end of the floor.
Ross was back to coming off the bench Sunday, and he didn’t need much warming up. He hit his first three shots — two of them 3-pointers — to spearhead a 12-0 run that left UW leading 26-15 midway through the first half. Ross ended up hitting 7 of 10 field goals and 3 of 5 from behind the 3-point arc.
“It’s definitely going to be a memory for me,” Ross said. “But I’ll think about this loss. I was definitely focusing on my team.”
Ross, who admitted that he had tournament-debut jitters in the Friday opener, made quite an impression but didn’t necessarily surprise his teammates.
“He goes on runs like that,” senior Matthew Bryan-Amaning said. “You never know how he’s going to go off, regardless of how his last game went.”
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