Huskies blow past Portland State, 111-55

Good. Better. Best. That's the easiest way to describe the weekend for the Washington men's basketball team, which struggled to a 74-69 win over Wright State on Friday before a much easier 96-78 win Saturday over Belmont. So Portland State may have caught the Huskies at just the wrong time last night. Or maybe they're just not good enough to hang with them on any night. The latter seems a more accurate statement, as Washington flat-out destroyed the Vikings in the final game of the Athletes in Action Classic, using two huge runs in the first half en route to an easy-as-it-gets 111-55 win in front of 8,236 spectators at Hec Edmundson Pavilion. The game was already decided after a 22-2 UW run midway through the first half, when Quincy Pondexter began to take over and the Huskies ran up and down the floor unimpeded. Washington also held Portland State without a field goal during the entire six minutes of that run, suffocating the Vikings after PSU opened with a 10-4 lead. "I was pleased with this performance tonight for a number of reasons," said UW head coach Lorenzo Romar. "Everyone that went into the game played with a high level of intensity. When the spread was so big, there was no letup in terms of our intensity. Our guys maintained their focus." Pondexter had a career-high 29 points and matched his career high with 13 rebounds before sitting with about 11 minutes left in the game. One of his best, to be sure. "It looks like it, huh?" Pondexter said, motioning toward the stat sheet on the table in front of him. "I don't care about this stuff. This is all a tribute to what my team has helped me do. A lot of my baskets were assisted by our great guards. Our team played a heck of a game." He almost out-rebounded the Vikings by himself. UW held a 26-4 edge on the glass at halftime - 26-4! - and ended up dominating that statistic, 47-16. But, that was partially because the Huskies weren't missing, as they shot 60.6 percent, scoring 64 points in the paint and getting buckets from 10 of the 11 players who saw the floor. Tyreese Breshers didn't play, though walk-on Brendan Sherrer saw two minutes of playing time, missing his only shot attempt. Their big-three guards - Isaiah Thomas, Venoy Overton and Abdul Gaddy - were just 3-15 in the first half from the field. Everyone else on the team was 19-23. And they ended the half with a 13-2 run that made it 55-29 at the break, the kind of dominating performance that a Pac-10 contender is expected to put on a Big Sky team. That trend continued into the second half, when Thomas came alive and led a 25-6 second-half run with one stretch of eight consecutive points. He finished with 21. Even when the game was already decided, there was no letup from the Huskies. That's not easy to do in an early-season non-conference game. "That's real hard," said Overton, who finished with 11 points and six assists. "But, we set a goal and said, 'Let's keep our foot on the pedal.' We knew just to pound the ball, and we could have a little fun at the end." None of it was fun for the Vikings, who looked completely helpless. They seemed to stop playing at times in the second half, apparently more than willing to just get on the bus and go home. If anybody was worried after the too-close-for-comfort win over Wright State, they may be able to rest a little easier now. Washington managed to win its last two games of the weekend by a combined 74 points, subbing players in and out and finding life easy with just about every grouping they tried. Players dove on the floor for loose balls when they led by 50. The defensive effort never seemed to relent. And the rebounds, obviously, were never an issue. "Those are some early things that may suggest that habits are forming, that you play a certain way all the time," Romar said. "That's how you begin to get better." And they seem to be doing that already. Reach Sports Editor Christian Caple at sports@dailyuw.com.

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