Behind 47 combined points from guards Terrence Ross and Tony Wroten, the Washington Huskies defeated Arizona 79-70 on Saturday in the Alaskan Airlines Arena to complete their season sweep of the Wildcats.
Ross scored 25 points on 11-for-18 shooting and chipped in five steals and five rebounds in 30 minutes of play. Arizona had no answer for the sophomore guard, who exited the game to chants of “one more year” from the Huskies faithful.
“When Terrance is playing like that it just makes our team that much harder to defend,” said UW head coach Lorenzo Romar. “They sort of have to zero in on him, so that just opens it up for C.J. (Wilcox) and the rest of the team. That’s the second game in a row he started out very well.”
While Ross led the way for the Huskies, it was the freshman guard Wroten who sliced and diced through Arizona’s defense, opening the door for Ross and company.
The Wildcats tried several defenders on Wroten, but no one could keep the 6-foot-5, 205-pound lefty out fo the paint as he went for 22 points on 8-for-22 shooting to go along with nine rebounds, two assists and only two turnovers.
“He is so different because he gets his own miss about as well as any player I’ve seen,” UA head coach Sean Miller said of Wroten, who had five offensive rebounds. “He puts a lot of pressure on your defense. The combination of Terrence Ross and Tony Wroten is really a 1-2 punch that you have to be ready to deal with because tonight they were terrific.”
Although the Wildcats limited Washington to 3-for-18 shooting from three and 41.8 percent shooting on the game, the Huskies only turned the ball over six times and racked up 11 more shot attempts than Arizona thanks to 18 offensive rebounds.
“They had 11 more shots at the basket than us. The fact that they turned the ball over six times and got twenty second shots, I think 42 points in the paint, it was clearly the difference in the game,” Miller said. “They do that very well.”
Arizona hauled in 17 offensive boards of its own, but the Wildcat couldn’t turn them into points as they failed to make the big plays when they needed to down the stretch.
UA and UW traded buckets early in the game but Ross drilled a three with 13:41 left in the first to give the Huskies a 15-14 lead that it wouldn’t relinquish for the rest of the game. Arizona did, however, hang around to trail 39-37 at the half.
“Really at halftime I felt good about how we had played but as the game wears on against a team like that, they have a way of wearing you down,” MIller said. “And to me they wore us down physically.”
The Wildcats and Huskies continued their see-saw battle in the second half and UW led 55-52 with 11:30 remaining but that was the last time Arizona would trail by one possession for the rest of the game. Washington’s perimeter play, size and athleticism proved too much for the Wildcats as the Huskies snapped a five-game UA win streak.
While Ross and Wroten stepped up for Washington, no one player took control for Arizona on the offensive end. Freshman guard Nick Johnson finished with 20 points on 6-for-14 shooting but eight of those came in the final 1:34 with the game out of hand.
Kyle Fogg and Solomon Hill combined to shoot 6-for-19 from the field and the Wildcats made only 39.3 percent of their shots and 28.6 percent of their triples on the game. Hill finished with 13 points and 10 rebounds, but shot only 2-for-7 from the field.
“I think the guys did a good job at playing in front of him,” Romar said. “He can put his head down and take and angle to get to the rim. He still got to the free throw line, but we held him to 2-7 from the field.”
In addition to Hill’s struggles, Brendon Lavender proved he’s human, shooting 2-for-6 from 3-point land. Point guard Josiah Turner also had little impact on the game with three points, four rebounds, two assists and two turnovers in 27 minutes.
Jesse Perry put together a solid game with 13 and five on 5-for-10 shooting but the Wildcats couldn’t keep UW off of the glass, slow down Ross or Wroten, or force any Huskies turnovers on their way to a crucial loss in Seattle, Wash.
Arizona, which moved to 10-5 in the Pac-12 with the loss, will play host to USC and UCLA on Thursday and Saturday, respectively, in a must-win series. The Wildcats are officially on the NCAA Tournament bubble and need to at least win out to have a chance at the big dance.
