UW sniffs out win
SAN DIEGO – Despite an unanticipated extra hour to prepare, they didn’t look ready for the game to begin Thursday.
Then the Washington Huskies apparently also figured out they weren’t ready for the season to end.
Overcoming some early play that was more suspicious than anything the bomb-sniffing dogs found earlier in the day, the Huskies eventually got untracked to beat Utah State 75-61 at Cox Arena in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
The Huskies (25-6) will play Illinois – which advanced to the title game last year before losing to North Carolina – in the second round here at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday.
The Huskies won’t be able to miss nine of their first 10 shots, as they did against Utah State, or get outrebounded 20-12 in the first half, as they also did against the Aggies, if they expect to survive against the Illini.
But it was enough against the Aggies, the second-place team from the Western Athletic Conference, who never really got back in the game after Jamal Williams came off the bench to lead a run midway through the first half that put the Huskies in command.
“Our guys were a team and our guys fought hard and went out and got us a victory,” UW coach Lorenzo Romar said.
After Williams, who finished with 15 points (12 in the first half) got the Huskies in gear, Brandon Roy – as might have been expected – put them over the top.
Roy finished with a game-high 28 points, 17 coming in the second half.
Many of his baskets were timely conversions that helped hold off the Aggies, who never got closer than seven after halftime although they never really went away.
“They were everything that we thought and have talked about all week,” Romar said of the Aggies. “No one ask us if we are surprised at how they played, because we weren’t. That’s exactly what we expected of them. We could not let up at any point in the game.”
It is the second straight year UW has advanced to the second round of the tournament and the first time the Huskies have won tournament games in successive seasons.
Roy hit 4 of 8 3-pointers and the Huskies tied a season high by hitting 12 in 27 attempts.