Washington Basketball: The Huskies overtake Bruins to stay undefeated in the Pac-12

The Huskies continued their undefeated streak in Pac-12 play by beating UCLA, 69-55

The Washington Basketball team started off making mistakes, giving up five turnovers in the first four minutes of the game. It allowed the UCLA Bruins to get ahead 12-4. The Huskies bounced back with a 12-2 run due to UCLA’s sloppy equally sloppy play.

The Huskies took the lead at 23-20 on a three point shot by David Crisp, his fourth in the first half with six minutes remaining. The Huskies never trailed the rest of the way. They finished the first half by outscoring the Bruins 11-3 for a lead of 31-23 at the break.

The Huskies ended up having 11 turnovers in the first half while the Bruins came away with 18. Guard David Crisp was the best player of the first half for the Huskies with 12 points.

Washington started off the second half by going on an 8-2 run. At the 16:26 mark, the Huskies were leading 39-25. This all happened with senior forward Noah Dickerson leaving the game and never returning after two minutes of the second half with an ankle injury. He had to be helped off by head coach Mike Hopkins and a trainer.

With Dickerson being the leading rebounder and second-leading scorer on the season for Washington Basketball, we would have thought the Bruins would make it more of a game in his absence. However, the Huskies managed to play great defense the rest of the way, especially forward Sam Timmins who played a lot of minutes in place of Dickerson.

I have to say Saturday’s game against the Bruins had to be one of Timmins’ best games as a Husky. Timmins, who averages 2.4 points a game, had nine points to go with six rebounds and three blocked shots. The Bruins often had to change the angle on their shots and very few went in.

For the game, the Bruins made 23 shots out of 54 attempts. From the three point line they made 4 of 15. The Huskies had the same amount of made shots and attempts as the Bruins, but shot 11-24 from the 3 point line. Long range certainly shows a lot why the Huskies won. The final score ended up Washington 69, UCLA 55.

The Huskies were led in scoring by Jaylen Nowell and David Crisp, both with 15. Matisse Thybulle was just behind Nowell and Crisp had 14 points. He bothered the Bruins on the defensive side of the ball with seven steals in the game.

The UCLA Bruins were led in scoring by sophomore guard Kris Wilkes with 20 points. He shot 8/19 from the field while missing all five shots he took from the three point line. He added four of five from the free throw line.

The only other player for the Bruins in double digits was guard Prince Ali with 12 points. He was five of eight from the field, making two of three from beyond the arc. Freshman center Moses Brown started out well in the first half, but thanks to the defensive performance of Sam Timmins after halftime, he wasn’t heard from again. He ended with nine points, all in the first half, along with seven rebounds.

The Washington Huskies now are 9-0 in the Pac-12 and 18-4 overall at the half-way mark of the Pac-12 schedule. This week they will head to Arizona to face the Wildcats on Thursday followed by the Arizona State Sun Devils on Saturday. If the Huskies win both those games for their third road sweep of the season, the rest of the league will find it hard to catch up.  Arizona State, USC, and Oregon State are all at 6-3 tied for second place.