TEMPE, Ariz. — Tony Wroten scored 22 points and ended a pair of rallies with three-point plays, lifting Washington to a 60-54 win over Arizona State on Thursday night.
Washington (13-7, 6-2 Pac-12) labored offensively in the first half and struggled from the perimeter all night, making just 1 of 8 from 3-point range.
Wroten provided the spark by hitting 9 of 12 shots, including a second-half dunk over Jonathan Gilling for a three-point play that put the Huskies up seven. He added another three-point play to make it 53-46 with just over a minute left.
Arizona State (6-14, 2-6) never fully recovered after going scoreless for more than 6 minutes to open the second half.
Gilling hit five 3-pointers and had 20 points to lead the Sun Devils, who lost their third straight without leading scorer Trent Lockett, who is out with a right ankle sprain.
After an up-and-down nonconference season, Washington has pulled it together in the Pac-12.
The Huskies entered Thursday night’s game just a half-game behind California and Oregon after winning four of five, and have been rolling with their up-tempo style, leading the conference in scoring at 78 points per game. Washington rolled in its last game, bouncing back from a loss to Cal with a 76-63 win over Stanford behind Wroten’s 21 points.
The Huskies figured to have another easy game lined up against wobbly Arizona State.
The senior-less Sun Devils struggled the start of the season, struggling with turnovers, suspensions and injuries.
Arizona State has been unsteady at the point, even before Keala King was dismissed from the team earlier this month, and entering Thursday ranked 333rd out of 336 teams in turnover margin, forcing 10.3 per game while giving it away an average of 16.6 times.
The Sun Devils have struggled offensively all season, and it’s gotten worse since Lockett went down against Oregon State. They managed to beat the Beavers, but scored just 54 points in a lopsided loss to Colorado and 43 in a blowout against Utah on Saturday, one of its worst games in coach Herb Sendek’s six seasons in the desert.
It didn’t start off as a walkover.
Arizona State struggled early against Washington, missing eight of its first 11 shots, and went more than 4 minutes without a field goal later in the half. The Sun Devils made up for it with solid defense and kept the game at a favorable-to-them slow pace to lead 24-22 at halftime after Chris Colvin’s buzzer-beating, coast-to-coast layup.
The Huskies struggled against Arizona State’s zone, taking tough shots against pressure and dribbling into the lane with nowhere to go. Washington missed all three of its 3-point attempts and was 10 of 26 overall in its lowest-scoring half of the season.
Washington started to find a rhythm on offense in the second half, hitting five of its first six shots while tightening up defensively to open with a 14-1 run.
The Huskies hounded Colvin into three turnovers in the first 5 minutes — two that sailed into the crowd — and held the Sun Devils scoreless until Ruslan Pateev hit a layup at 13:52.
Arizona State clawed its way back to within four, but Wroten dunked over Gilling for a three-point play to put the Huskies up 46-39 with 5½ minutes left.
The Sun Devils pulled within four on a 3-pointer by Gilling with 1:39 left, but Wroten answered with another three-point play on a putback, and the Huskies maintained their cushion over the closing seconds.
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