Watts A Bright Light As Huskies Leave Pac-10 Shadows

The unranked Washington Huskies never trailed the nation’s 10th-ranked men’s basketball team Sunday. Not after Donald Watts decided it was time.

Time to play like the old Donald Watts. Time to play like a new generation Husky. Time to make good on promises to himself and his father and his coach and teammates.

And, yes, time to live up to the expectations of everyone in Seattle and the Pac-10 and beyond who had ever looked at the younger Watts and decided: “Of course you’re going to get it done. We’ve been watching and waiting since the day you arrived.”

Arrived here on Earth, not just the Montlake campus.

“My son was born on Channel 5 and 7 and 11,” Slick Watts said Sunday afternoon, his natty sports coat flung off in celebration to reveal a bright purple silk Husky vest that shined under the lights at Hec Ed.

On this day, Slick Watts’ son, Donald, was going to hunt down Henry Bibby’s son, Michael, and help establish Washington as a Pac-10 contender.

The Huskies (12-5 overall, 5-4 Pac-10) helped their cause. They helped make the second half of the Pac-10 schedule worth anticipating by beating Arizona 92-88.

The entire Washington team delivered, shooting 59 percent and defensively laying waste to the smooth and silky talent that coach Lute Olson always collects.

Olson snatched smooth-shooter Michael Dickerson from Federal Way and slinky-footed Jason Terry from Seattle, but some of the players who decided to stay at Washington made up for all that in a 40-minute show of poise and resolve.

Watts and Mark Sanford and Todd MacCulloch helped erase a bit of the difference between Arizona and Washington. The Wildcats never got a handle on how to pressure the Huskies until the frenzied, tense and tantalizing final 2:09.

Meanwhile, the Huskies demonstrated they are a lot more than a work in progress, which is the reason sophomore Watts, from Kirkland’s Lake Washington High, stayed home in the first place.

So what if it has taken a little longer than expected? Watts broke out Sunday, scoring 15 points on 6-for-10 shooting and dishing out six critical assists while taking down a program where all his high school friends were already making noise.

“I gave it 100 percent. Maybe there’s a little extra motivation against Jason and Michael,” he said.

“They want to come home and light you up. But I didn’t want to hear about it all summer long. I play with those guys. I look at them and say they’re not better than me. They’re not that much better or not at all. And they’re players and they’re doing well. And I have to do the same thing. I just have to show that I can do it.”

It has taken a while for Watts to realize his place on this Huskies team is to be a little selfish and look to score. At least, he must use his court vision and intuition to break down the defense, then hit the open man. He did that when he fed MacCulloch for some sweet and easy layins.

“The coaching staff challenged me to turn it around. So I made a promise to myself after the Arizona State game that I would play like Donald Watts,” he said.

“I have to do it myself. Nobody is going to give it to me. I have to go out there and take a few chances and do it like I know how to do it.”

After a freshman season that was an overwhelming adjustment to the college game, Watts still shows an unwillingness to be assertive and instinctive.

“I think Donald is trying to be a nice person too much. He works on it. He’s a team player. He doesn’t want to be seen as the son of an NBA player or trying to be too cool or hip,” Slick Watts, the former Sonic, said.

“Now I’ve been preaching selfishness for two years but he don’t listen to that. He don’t listen to me, but I think he’s listening to coach (Bob) Bender. And I think the coaches are telling him something very positive.”

So when did Watts decide to make a statement? Turns out it was exactly on time.

The Huskies were stung by a 7-0 Arizona run at the start of the game, when Terry and Dickerson seemed destined to make their homecoming the trash-talk topic of next summer’s pickup games. But before it got any worse for UW, Watts went to work. He was the foot on the accelerator of a 14-4 run that lifted the Huskies from a 13-9 deficit to a 21-15 lead.

To ignite the Hec Ed crowd and revive the ABC viewers who might have thought it was going to be a long afternoon for the Huskies, Watts stole the ball with the game tied and drove the length of the floor to score the easy layup.

At 15-13, a TV timeout was called, and the Huskies never relinquished the lead. They stepped up to keep the Arizona shooters out of the lane and drive them to take awkward shots.

“It was a good win for us,” Watts said. “Now we have to build and build and build. Coach Bender says you have to take what you’ve done and not go backwards.”

But while Watts is a good student and pays attention to his coach, he and the Huskies can see they are a lot better off when he listens to himself. Sunday, he was as good as the good players at Arizona.