Outright title not tempting enough
The Washington Huskies lost their season finale at UCLA and they blew it because the loss was coming against a UCLA team in turmoil and it may have cost them the outright Pac 12 title. Cal is tied with UW with 4 conference losses and if they beat Stanford on Sunday then Washington and California will share the Pac 12 title.
Also, if Cal beats Stanford, the Golden Bears will get the top seed in the conference tournament since they beat the Huskies in the only game between the 2 this season.
Here are 5 reasons why Washington blew it in the loss to UCLA.
1. The Huskies did not step up in the 2nd half
Washington entered halftime with a 3 points lead (47-44), but in the 2nd half they were outscored by 8 points to lose by 5. UW’s Aziz N’Diaye made a layup with 1:13 left the game to tie the score at 69, but the Huskies failed to score after that.
After N’Diaye made his layup to knot the score the Bruins came back to score and Washington had a golden chance to take the lead, but Terrence Ross missed a j and after C.J. Wilcox grabbed the offensive rebound Darnell Gant missed a 3-pointer.
2. Key missed 3′s down the stretch
While Washington shot the 3 well for the game (9/22) they missed them when it counted. The Huskies had a 4 point lead with a little less than 10 minutes in the game and instead of feeding the ball down low they jacked up some 3′s, but they missed their last 6 long bombs.
3. Free throws were key
5 BIG reasons Washington lost to UCLA
The Huskies were not very aggressive getting to the hoop only taking 11 free throws in the game and they only hit 6 of them. On the other side of the coin UCLA got to the charity stripe 21 times and hit on 15 of their free throws.
4. Darnell Gant and Abdul Gaddy struggled
While Gant and Gaddy are not the big guns for the Huskies these guys came into the game combining to averaging just over 15 ppg. However, in the UCLA game they combined to score 7 points on 2/14 shooting. While Gant did have 10 rebounds he missed all 3 of his 3-pt attempts.
5. UCLA’s Lazeric Jones came up big in the clutch
Jones scored 20 points twice hitting go-ahead buckets in the final 8:39 in the game and he also hit 4 free throws with only seconds remaining to ice the win for the Bruins.
