The Washington Huskies agreed they hadn’t been satisfied with their recent play.
So, both coach Lorenzo Romar and his team did something about it Saturday as the 24th-ranked Huskies mauled Portland, 89-54, before an announced crowd of 9,275 at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.
Washington bolted to a double-digit lead in the first five minutes, stretched it to 30 by halftime, and continued working until the end.
“With the exception of the first seven minutes of the second half, I thought we played as well as we’ve played since Portland State (a 111-55 victory on Nov. 15) and maybe even better,” Romar said. “We had gone a stretch where we had won a few and lost some, but in the midst of it hadn’t really put a good efficient effort together. And I thought tonight we did.”
Washington (7-2) had lost two of its previous three games, and Romar had been especially unhappy with his team’s carelessness with the ball and on the defensive end.
Both problems vanished Saturday as the Huskies had 11 turnovers – including just two in the first half. Defensively, they held the Pilots to 15-of-44 shooting (.341).
“I thought our guys did a really good job of concentrating on the defensive end,” Romar said. “I thought we made progress.”
Romar helped that along by tweaking his starting lineup. He gave freshman point guard Abdul Gaddy his second career start and returned junior Darnell Gant to the starting forward spot he had held at the start of the season.
“I wanted us to get a little more organized,” Romar said. “I wanted us to be a little more efficient, a little less risk-taking in that first five.”
Romar also stepped up the intensity of practices during the week, again with extra emphasis on protecting the basketball.
“We really concentrated on that a lot,” senior Quincy Pondexter said. “(There was) a little bit more penalty for it in practice. We really wanted to take care of the ball because that separates winning from losing.”
Pondexter said the penalty was extra running for negative assist-to-turnover ratios.
On Saturday, the Huskies had 20 assists to go with their 11 turnovers.
Adding mightily to that positive ratio was sophomore guard Isaiah Thomas who strung impressive numbers all along his stat sheet: 16 points on 4-of-7 shooting from the field with eight assists and no turnovers.
“We kind of circled this game on our calendar,” Thomas said. “It so happened to be after the Georgetown game where we lost. We wanted to come back and play hard and play together, and we did a good job of that.”
The result was a long step up from UW’s 74-66 loss to Georgetown one week earlier. And it seemed even a longer way from the 80-74 defeat that Portland had hung on the Huskies in their opener last season.
“There was a lot of motivation tonight to come out and play as hard as we can,” Pondexter said. “Not necessarily just the timing of the Georgetown game, but we really remember the loss that we had (in Portland) last year. It was early in the year, a lot of us played bad games, and we really wanted to come out and rebound from that game. Last year, they thought they could beat us, and coming into this game I think they really thought they could beat us again.”
Pondexter had a game-high 17 points, and led four Huskies who scored in double-digits.
Among them was sophomore guard Scott Suggs, who had a career-high 13 points.
Guard Nik Raivio led Portland (6-4) with 13 points and seven rebounds.
This was the Pilots’ fourth loss in their last five games.
“I was disappointed we didn’t handle (UW’s pressure) better,” Portland coach Eric Reveno said. “... I also thought the start was going to be key, and we started off terribly.”
Watching from behind the Pilots’ bench was Seattle Sounders FC goalkeeper Kasey Keller, a Portland alum.
Washington returns to action at 8 p.m. Tuesday, when No. 23 Texas A&M visits Edmundson Pavilion as part of the annual Big 12/Pac-10 Hardwood Series.
Don Ruiz, 253-597-8808
blog.thenewstribune.com/uwsports
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