The Washington Huskies are far from a perfect team. Their flaws are apparent and well documented.
But after Saturday, the sum of all those imperfections might be enough to earn them a spot in the NCAA tournament.
With a matchup against perennial tournament entrant Arizona and a noon start – early enough for all the members of the selection committee to watch – the Huskies played perhaps their most complete game of the season, defeating the Wildcats, 79-70, on senior day at Alaska Airlines Arena.
“You can only hope that senior day ends up like it did today,” coach Lorenzo Romar said. “From my standpoint, it was great to see how we did it. We put together 40 minutes today. We did a really good job because that team is tough to play.”
The win kept Washington (19-8 overall, 12-3 Pacific-12) atop the conference, and completed a sweep of Arizona (19-9, 10-5).
Despite the Pac-12’s poor rating, that should help the Huskies’ résumé for an at-large tournament bid if they don’t win the conference tournament.
“I think it’s big,” Romar said. “I think they are respected. I think their résumé is respected and I think it definitely helps us.”
After falling behind 7-2, the Huskies stormed back behind sophomore Terrence Ross. The slender shooting guard buried a 3-pointer from the wing to give Washington a 15-14 lead with 13 minutes, 41 seconds remaining in the first half. The Huskies would never trail again, thanks largely to Ross.
After a string of strong second-half performances and a series of queries as to why it takes him until then to come alive, Ross answered by scoring 15 first-half points – most by a Huskies player this season – on a variety of jump shots, drives and put-backs.
“I’ve always had a mindset to score early,” Ross said. “Sometimes the shots weren’t falling, sometimes the (defensive) pressure was different. I don’t know. Tonight, shots were falling.”
When Ross’ shots are falling, Washington is tough to beat.
“When Terrance is playing like that it just makes our team that much harder to defend,” Romar said. “They sort of have to zero in on him, so that just opens it up for C.J. (Wilcox) and the rest of the team. That’s the second game in a row he started out very well.”
If Ross was the player of the first half, Aziz N’Diaye provided the play of the half.
A few minutes after Ross gave UW its first lead, N’Diaye sent the sellout crowd into pandemonium.
The 7-foot center stepped out to defend a high ball screen set for Arizona shooting guard Nick Johnson. N’Diaye played it perfectly and swatted Johnson’s jumpshot attempt. But N’Diaye wasn’t satisfied with just the block. He hustled after the loose ball, corralled it before Johnson could, appeared to come close to traveling while doing so, took one dribble, two steps, and threw down a one-handed dunk.
“I hadn’t seen that,” Romar said, fighting back chuckles. “He keeps telling me all the things he can do. I guess we saw one of the things he can do. Maybe we aren’t using him right.”
Arizona’s bench exploded in anger after the play, screaming for a traveling call. Coach Sean Miller came out on the floor yelling at referee Deron White, who whistled him for a technical foul.
As N’Diaye ran by, Miller admitted saying to him, “You traveled, come on, you traveled twice.”
Washington pushed the lead to as much as 11 in the first half, but never could quite pull away. At halftime, the Huskies’ lead was down to two, 39-37.
“Really, at halftime I felt good about how we had played,” Miller said. “But as the game wears on against a team like that, they have a way of wearing you down.”
Washington wore the Wildcats down by remaining aggressive offensively. Tony Wroten, after 3-for-12 shooting in the first half, scored six of the Huskies’ first eight points after the break to push the lead up to six. He also added his own highlight play, throwing down a one-handed dunk over Angelo Chol midway through the second half.
“I wasn’t even planning on dunking it,” said Wroten, who finished with 22 points on 8-for-22 shooting and nine rebounds. “Coming down, I saw it was a 2-on-1 and I saw Terrence, so I was already plotting to throw it up to Terrence. Then two guards came sprinting down so Terrence disappeared, so I just went up for a layup and turned it over and dunked on him.”
It was another play that kept the Huskies focused.
“Our guys loved that,” Romar said. “I loved it. It was pretty sweet. I’m sure it got us going. But I saw a little maturity and growth because even when those things happened, we celebrated but didn’t let up.”
The Wildcats’ last real threat came with 7:38 remaining, when they cut the lead to 63-57 on one of two free throws by Solomon Hill. But Wilcox, who was held without a field goal in the first half, buried a pair of 3-pointers to put the game out of reach.
“I thought this weekend we probably played our most consistent basketball if you look at the first half against Arizona State,” Romar said. “Three out of the four halves, we played the way we should be playing.”
They played like an NCAA tournament team.
“Of course, our team feels like that,” said Ross, who finished with a game-high 25 points on 11-for-19 shooting. “We also know we can do a lot more. The sky is still the limit for us. We can still show everybody that we can go out and play with the best of them.”
Ryan Divish: 253-597-8483 ryan.divish@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/uwsports
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