Fear not Oregon, the Washington Huskies also experienced an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the late-blooming Arizona State Sun Devils.
Less than a week after scorching the Ducks by 27 points, the 3-8 Sun Devils dominated the Washington Huskies, 89-57, Saturday night in Tempe, Ariz.
The Huskies, who host the Ducks Saturday, dropped to 9-14 overall and 3-8 in the Pacific-10 Conference.
Washington got outrebounded 45-25 and missed 18 of its 27 free throw attempts.
“It’s the type of game you can’t make anything real positive out of what happened out there,” Washington head coach Bob Bender told The Seattle Times.
It was Washington’s worst loss of the season, eclipsing its earlier 31-point loss to No. 2 Stanford. It also came against a Sun Devil team that hadn’t won at home all season.
Not many things have gone right for the Huskies since their 72-71 overtime victory over the Ducks back on Jan. 18th. After the win, the Washington players were heard whooping it up in their locker room, and talked of how that would be the turning point of their season.
Since then, Washington has gone just 1-5, with its only win being a 78-72 home victory against Washington State. And the post-game locker room scene after Saturday’s loss to ASU was the polar opposite of the one that took place in Eugene.
The Husky locker room was closed for more than 20 minutes, and while it was, Bender wrote the number 32 on a chalkboard for the number of points the Huskies had lost by. Then, when the room did open to the media, it was reported that Washington senior Thalo Green’s eyes were filled with tears.
“It got to the point in the second half when we just gave up as a team,” Green told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “It’s hard to explain. There’s a lot of emotional stuff that has to do with more than basketball.”
The Huskies know they must change their ways in order to finish with a respectable record.
“We’ve got to buck it up in practice,” center Marlon Shelton said. “We can’t be friends anymore. We’ve got to go at each other’s throats and make it carry over to the games.”
In the zone
In Arizona State’s victory against Washington, Sun Devil forward Tommy Smith couldn’t miss and went 11-for-11 on the field to tie the Pac-10 record for accuracy.
But, when interviewed after the game by Fox Sports Net’s Reggie Theus, Smith didn’t know anything about any records.
“I sounded so dumb,” Smith told The Arizona Republic. “I just said, ‘Uh, yeah, it’s good for our team and I just wanted to help them win.’”
By the way, the last Pac-10 player to shoot perfectly from the field was Oregon’s Bryan Bracey, who made all 10 of his shots in a win at Washington last season.
