Cal gets in Huskies' way again
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Cal 86, UW 71 •
Pac-10 standings, stats
BERKELEY, CALIF. – The Washington Huskies would be looking down at the rest of Pacific-10 Conference if it weren’t for the California Golden Bears.
And Cal would be stuck in the mediocre middle of the league if it wasn’t for UW.
However, both teams are league members in good standing, and that’s a bad thing for the Huskies and a good thing for the Golden Bears, who have handed UW two of its three league losses so far.
The first was a triple-overtime thriller last month in Seattle. But the rematch Thursday was a relative blowout: 86-71, at Haas Pavilion.
“(Cal is) a very difficult matchup,” UW coach Lorenzo Romar said. “Their wings are so big for us. There were times when we needed an offensive lineup out on the floor, but if we’d had that, we’d have suffered on the defensive end. When we had the defensive lineup in, it was hard for us to score. It is a tough matchup for us.”
It was toughest for UW senior forward Jon Brockman, who didn’t score a field goal and ended up with four points to go with his 15 rebounds.
The problem again was Cal’s length, as players such as Jamal Boykin, who had three blocks, and Jordan Wilkes, who had one, made life difficult for the Huskies around the basket.
“They had one guy defending him and anther guy parked in his lap,” Romar said. “That’s happened before, and other guys would step up and knock shots down.”
On Thursday, Quincy Pondexter filled that role for the Huskies with 21 points. But he didn’t have enough help, as Justin Dentmon (14) and Isaiah Thomas (13) were the only other Huskies to score in double figures.
“It was one of those games where I felt I needed to step up for our team to win,” Pondexter said. “My role the whole year is whenever we need something I’ll do it. But I don’t want to come up and score a lot of points every day. I’ll give up my points any day of the week to have the win.”
Pondexter got his points – but not the win – because Cal (17-6 overall, 6-4 Pac-10) did something the 22nd-ranked Huskies didn’t: share the ball.
Theo Robertson and Jerome Randle led the way with 21 points each – with Randle getting 19 in the decisive second half. Wilkes had 14 points and Boykin had 13. It was more than enough to overcome the near absence of Patrick Christopher, who scored three points after having 27 in the first meeting in Seattle.
However, in Romar’s mind, the points column on the statistics sheet merely reflected the real problem in the assists column: Cal had 16, while the Huskies had six.
“I didn’t think we were in synch the entire time,” Romar said. “Give Cal a lot of credit – they were an absolute machine in the second half, they really executed on both ends of the floor. I think we were a little frustrated offensively. But tonight was a little uncharacteristic of this Husky team in that we weren’t sharing the ball as much.”
You can hardly tell it from the final score, but for a long while the teams shadowed each other as closely as they had in Cal’s classic 88-85 triple-overtime win in Seattle last month.
In the first half, the largest lead in either direction was four points.
Early in the second half, it was Washington that seemed on the verge of taking control as the Huskies rode a 10-0 run to a 43-34 lead.
However, just as they had done in Seattle, the Golden Bears wouldn’t go away. This time, they rode Wilkes and Randle back, pulling even at 49 about 13 minutes from the end.
Randle kept firing away, igniting the crowd of 8,217, and the Bears kept pouring it on from there.
The result dropped Washington (16-6, 7-3) one game behind UCLA in the conference standings. The Bruins routed rival USC on Wednesday and don’t have another conference game this week, meaning that the Huskies will be trying to close to one-half game of the lead at 2:30 p.m. Sunday when they conclude their Bay Area trip against Stanford at Maples Pavilion.
Don Ruiz, 253-597-8808
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