SEATTLE – Washington guard Terrell Brown may be a different player since he left Arizona last spring but the Wildcats also happen to be a different team.
So when Brown threw up 24 points for Washington against his old teammates in the first half Saturday, helping Washington take an early 14-point lead, the fourth-ranked Wildcats merely adjusted a few things and proceeded to another blowout.
In a 92-68 win over Washington at Hec Edmundson Pavilion, the Wildcats figured out how to get through the Huskies’ zone defense, connecting with Azuolas Tubelis for some inside scoring and having Bennedict Mathurin operating his usual road show all over the court, among other highlights.
“We knew they would play zone almost the whole game because they did at our place,” Tubelis said, referring to UA’s 95-79 win over Washington on Jan. 3 at McKale Center. “We knew where we could attack them, where their weaknesses are.”
So Tubelis went often to the high post, where he collected passes and drove inside or dished from there, finishing with 21 points and 10 rebounds. Mathurin had 25 points on 8-for-11 shooting, while Oumar Ballo added 10 points and five rebounds, and Dalen Terry added 12 points and seven assists.
Arizona worked the ball in and around the Huskies so well that, despite some early shooting struggles, the Wildcats finished shooting 57.1% from the field.
“I just think it’s being a little tougher and not running your offense at half court,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said. “You can't run a zone offense at half court. You’ve got to press up, get closer to that 3-point line, find those gaps inside, then once it's inside, it's hard. You’ve got to make plays.”
Defensively, the Wildcats also toughened up.
After allowing Washington to shoot 72.7% from the field over the first eight minutes of the game – when Brown hit all five shots he took – Arizona wound up holding Washington to just 35.6% for the game. The Huskies shot only 28.6% in the second half.
Brown was central to both Washington trends. A role player for UA last season who is now a candidate for Pac-12 Player of the Year, Brown scored his 24 points in the first half while shooting 8 of 12 from the field and 8 of 11 from the free throw line. But after halftime, he had just five points while shooting 1 for 8.
It was nearly an identical outcome to Brown’s game against Arizona on Jan. 3. In that game, Brown had 19 points on 8-for-11 shooting in the first half, then went just 2 of 11 from the field while scoring nine points after halftime.
Lloyd said Brown “had our number in both first halves,” but that the Wildcats were able to adjust their assignments enough to create more help defense on Brown.
“That seemed like it helped out,” Lloyd said. “And, hey, playing the way he plays takes a lot of effort and energy. You can wear a guy down over the course of the game, too.”
The win moved fourth-ranked Arizona to 22-2 and 12-1 in the Pac-12, while Washington dropped to 13-10 and 8-5. The Wildcats will return home to a normal week without makeup games, next playing Oregon State on Thursday at McKale Center.
Arizona's Dalen Terry runs into Washington's Nate Roberts during the first half Saturday. UA won to improve to 12-1 in Pac-12 play.
Leading 45-36 at halftime, Arizona went on to leads of up to 28 points in the second half while quieting Brown and holding the Huskies to under 30-percent shooting over most of the second half.
Arizona had plenty of fun along way the way, too. Christian Koloko made an alley-oop dunk off a feed from Mathurin while Terry later dunked to give UA a 73-46 lead with 9:15 left to go.
A few minutes later, Terry paid it forward by dishing an alley-oop pass to Ballo, who dunked to give UA a 77-49 lead with 7:44 left. At that point, Washington was shooting just 26.1% from the field in the second half while UA had made two-thirds of its shots.
In the first half, Brown led the Huskies to an early 25-11 lead by hitting all seven shots he took to that point. But Ballo said the Wildcats weren’t worried.
Sure enough, after Washington went up 27-15 nearly 10 minutes into the game, UA began what became an 18-1 run that made it 33-28 with 3:50 left when Kerr Kriisa hit a 3-pointer.
“He’s a great player. Everyone knows that he's a good player,” Ballo said of Brown. “But at the end of the day it is a team sport. One person cannot be five people and for me, I did not panic. My teammates, we knew we were going to come back because if he is the one has to score 60 points for their team to win, that’s good for us because he’s not gonna do that. And we played good defense.”
Tubelis started the Wildcats' 18-1 run with five inside baskets while Terry added a 3-pointer and Ballo threw in a pair of free throws during the run before Kriisa capped it with a 3.
Tubelis became a natural a focal point, Lloyd said, because of his position within the zone.
Washington's Terrell Brown Jr. shoots with Arizona's Azuolas Tubelis (10) and Christian Koloko defending during the first half.
“Zu plays in that high post and a lot of times in that zone, that’s the hot receiver,” Lloyd said. “But once that hot receiver gets the ball, he's got to make another play usually. So he did a good job finishing shots today or setting other guys up.”
It wasn’t so easy for the Wildcats initially. After Mathurin hit a 3-pointer to give UA a 5-2 lead two minutes into the game, Washington scored seven straight while Brown scored for the second time already with 16:23 left in the half.
From there, the Huskies went ahead by up to 14 before the game flipped completely around and remained that way.
"Washington gets a ton of credit -- they came out and were playing extremely hard," Lloyd said. "They got some shots to fall early and we were a little bit back on our heels. Their zone was really aggressive. It just took us a little bit of time to work ourselves into that game."
