Hec, yeah: UW continues Edmundson dominance with another blowout win

Add another victim to the Hec Edmundson Pavilion vengeance tour. And add another wrench into the free-for-all that is the Pac-10 standings. Embarrassed in the desert earlier this season, the Washington men's basketball team completed step No. 2 of its Arizona vindication Saturday night, putting the screws to an overwhelmed Arizona State team in an easy-as-you-please 76-53 win in front of a frenzied sellout crowd of 10,000. The Huskies now sit one game behind first-place California after sweeping Arizona and ASU, and are now tied with four other teams for second place at 6-5 in conference play. And their next opponent just so happens to be Cal, which provides UW a chance to move from eighth place to a first-place tie in a span of three weeks. Washington beat Cal 84-69 at Hec Ed earlier this year in a game that was decided by halftime. That continues to be a theme. As out of sorts and inefficient as the Huskies were in a 68-51 loss to ASU in Tempe, Ariz., earlier this season, they were essentially the polar opposite on Saturday. Washington led 25-6 midway through the first half, by which point everyone in the building knew that this game, like most others in the early stages at Hec Ed this season, was already over. "We did a great job defensively this time around," senior guard Quincy Pondexter said. "We really wanted to take them off that 3-point line and make sure they got tough, contested shots every time." Everything looked tough for ASU, which had something to do with Justin Holiday, who sat out Washington's first two games against Arizona and Arizona State. Holiday grabbed 10 rebounds and scored seven points, while essentially taking Arizona's Jamelle Horne and ASU's Rihards Kuksiks out of the game with his defense. "He's all over the place defensively," UW head coach Lorenzo Romar said of Holiday. Kuksiks, who went for 27 against the Huskies in Tempe, was nowhere to be found. He scored 10 points and played just 16 minutes off the bench. But even when he scored, it was a moot point. In Tempe, the Huskies needed seven minutes to make their first field goal. In Seattle, it took just 12:30 for them to build an insurmountable 19-point lead. "It was just two different games all the way around," ASU head coach Herb Sendek said. It was the Huskies' defense that made sure its offense didn't struggle so mightily this time around. They forced 18 turnovers and scored 18 points in transition, Isaiah Thomas and Pondexter leading the way with 17 points each. "I just think defensively, we were really dialed in," Romar said. "We defended much better this time than we did in Tempe." Washington held ASU without a field goal for the game's first 4:55, then went on a 13-1 run that spanned nearly five minutes and saw UW leading 27-7 before Ty Abbott finally broke the dry spell with a 3-pointer with 7:15 remaining in the first half. The Sun Devils just couldn't do anything right. They had a hard time even getting into their offense at times, as Holiday and Venoy Overton clogged passing lanes and contested every dribble. ASU point guard Derek Glasser was limited to just three points and committed five turnovers, the Dawg Pack riding him all game, armed with signs that displayed a picture of Glasser that read "Tool Academy," as well as a Photoshopped sign of Overton with his arm around Glasser's mom that read, "Mr. and Mrs. Overton." "We wanted to take [Glasser] out of the game," Thomas said. "He starts everything, and if you can take a player like that off, then they have to go to the next guy." The Huskies led by as many as 24 in the first half, took a 42-27 lead into halftime and never led by fewer than 15 in the second half. That's almost not surprising, given how dominant the Huskies have been at home this year. They're now 16-1 at Hec Ed, and they've won 11 of those by double digits, five of their past six by 15 or more. But the road has been a different story, and that's where they head now. They ran Cal out of the building the first time around at Hec Ed, but now they head to Haas Pavilion on Thursday with an 0-6 road record and with the Bears likely planning a little home revenge of their own. It's hard to picture the Huskies strolling into Haas and putting the same kind of beating on them as they did the first time around. But Pondexter thinks UW's blistering four-game homestand, during which they went 4-0 and outscored their opponents by 104 points, has given them the necessary confidence to put their road woes behind them. "We have a lot of momentum, and I think we know what's at stake to be right up there at the top," Pondexter said. "To be in the position that we are in right now, to be back in it is fortunate, because sometimes you lose a few and the season is over. We still have a good chance at winning the championship, and that's our goal. We're the defending champions, and we need to redeem ourselves." After this weekend, redemption seems to be this team's specialty. Reach Sports Editor Christian Caple at sports@dailyuw.com.

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