Inside The Huskies

UW Makes Things Interesting to No Avail, Loses at Oregon

The Ducks sweep the season series from Mike Hopkins' team.

Dan Raley

UW Makes Things Interesting to No Avail, Loses at Oregon
UW Makes Things Interesting to No Avail, Loses at Oregon /
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A University of Washington basketball team headed for a bad defeat made things entertaining at Oregon — twice cutting a 20-point deficit to one — but there was no reward in the end for the Huskies, who were saddled with an 85-80 defeat in Eugene.

The Huskies (12-11 overall, 4-8 Pac-12) roared back from a 66-46 deficit and trailed 73-72 when Moses Wood sank a 3-pointer with 3:27 remaining and 75-74 with 2:13 left to play when Koren Johnson broke the press and scored on a lay-in.

Yet Mike Hopkins' team missed a handful of opportunities to complete the comeback, the final effort failing badly when big man Wilhelm Breidenbach shot an airball from 3-point range with 18 seconds left and the UW down 79-76. 

The Huskies dropped their fourth game in their last five appearances and were swept in their season series with the Ducks (16-7, 8-4).

Oregon was led in scoring by Jermaine Couisnard, a 6-foot-4 senior and a one-time South Carolina transfer who finished with a game-high 27 points. Couisnard won the earlier game in Seattle with a lay-in with 12 seconds remaining, good for a 76-74 decision. 

Early on, the Huskies played with no sense urgency at Knight Arena with plenty of reason to respond — their coach's job clearly is on the line. Hopkins has turned in five consecutive lackluster Husky seasons (65-80), with this campaign beginning to tail off. 

Point guard Sahvir Wheeler topped the Huskies with 16 points, while center Braxton Meah finished with 15 points before fouling out and Keion Brooks matched him with 15 of his own.

The UW led just three times early on, 9-6 on the last occasion, before getting outscored 9-0 and playing catch-up thereafter.

Hopkins' players had no offensive flow. They committed eight turnovers in the first eight minutes of the game and missed all but one of their 10 first-half 3-pointers.

The UW's Brooks, a 21.2-point scorer entering this contest, took just four shots in the opening half and hit one on a dunk as the Ducks repeatedly put a double-team on him and he couldn't get comfortable with the ball in his hands.

In the opening half, the Huskies' only consistent offense consisted of four dunks by Meah and three lay-ins by Breidenbach, with the two big men going 7-for-7 on shot attempts.

The UW fell behind by 31-19, but  hung in there and trailed just 40-34 at the break. 

Ten minutes into the second half, the Huskies were down by 20, with N'Faly Dante's free throw putting Oregon up 66-46, and a blowout appeared imminent.

However, the Ducks went scoreless for seven minutes, enabling the UW to get back in it. But victory remained highly elusive.

Down to at least nine games counting the Pac-12 tournament, the UW next moves to Oregon State for a Saturday afternoon game at Gill Coliseum, looking for a road split, with tipoff at 4 p.m.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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