Huskies shake off poor first half to hold off Montana

Nov 30, 2009, 12:00 AM

Plagued by a poor shooting night and a tight Montana zone, the Washington men's basketball team played its worst game of the season and almost had to learn a tough non-conference lesson last night at Hec Edmundson Pavilion. But the Huskies are defending Pac-10 champions for a reason. They finally showed why in the second half, using a frantic 27-10 run to eventually walk away unscathed with a 63-59 win over a tough Grizzlies team in front of 8,515. Not pleased with how his team played, head coach Lorenzo Romar still insisted a game like this isn't all bad. "I wouldn't trade the way this game went for anything," Romar said, "because it's going to prepare us for down the road." That's also true of the way the Huskies were defended all night. Montana seemed to have the Huskies figured out: play a zone, pack the middle, and don't let Quincy Pondexter or Isaiah Thomas slash to the rim. It worked. Pondexter didn't score before halftime, and Thomas had just two. The Grizzlies' zone forced UW to take 11 three-pointers, the weakest part of the Huskies offensive game. They made just three of them. "I think we had some pretty good looks," Romar said. "We missed a number of lay-ups and some wide-open shots." Washington shot only 24.2 percent in the first half, struggling to a 29-24 halftime deficit and going nearly nine minutes without a field goal at one point. "We didn't make shots," Thomas said. "They weren't doing anything we haven't seen." Montana made shots. They looked solid. The Huskies looked asleep. "It was more a tribute to Montana's defense and the schemes they were playing," said Pondexter, who finished with just seven points. "We have to get a lot better to live to our expectations of this year." But the Grizzlies could only hold the Huskies down for so long -- and it did take so long. Washington finally took the lead on a driving floater by Venoy Overton, who didn't start because he was 30 minutes late to the shoot around, with 9:07 left in the game, capping a 20-6 run that spanned more than five minutes. That run started with the UW trailing 38-26, looking nearly dead in the water after starting the second half with just one field goal in five minutes. "Man, we can't give this one up," Thomas said, when asked for his thoughts when the UW trailed by 10. "We've got to fight, do whatever we can. We can't give up a game like this one." They mounted their comeback on the defensive end, getting in passing lanes and disrupting a Montana offense that cooled considerably and shot only 39.3 percent in the second half. The Grizzlies also turned the ball over 19 times. "Coach just said it starts on the defensive end," Thomas said. "It all started when we started getting steals, rebounds, deflections." And after Montana came back to take a 57-55 lead with 2:43 to go, it was senior captain Pondexter who put the Huskies back up. After Thomas missed a three-pointer, Pondexter snagged the rebound, went back up, drew a foul, and made the basket. He sank the free throw to put UW back up by one. After a Grizzlies turnover, Elston Turner sank a 16-footer to give the Huskies a 60-57 lead. Then, with UW (5-0) leading 62-59, Overton made the best play by a Husky all night, blocking Anthony Johnson's three-point attempt at the top of the key, recovering the rebound with 4.1 seconds left and making one of two free throws to ice UW's diciest victory of the year. "When you're not doing anything on offense, it starts on the defensive end," said Thomas, who led the UW with 13 points. "We tried to do it, and we did a better job of it in the second half." Reach Sports Editor Christian Caple at sports@dailyuw.com.

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