Huskies Split LA Road Trip with Loss to USC
By Ben Renner
The UW Huskies fell 98-88 to USC on Saturday to split their Los Angeles road trip and fall into a tie for second place in the Pac-12.
The Pac-12 tightened when the Huskies lost Saturday afternoon to the USC Trojans 98-88. After starting conference play 3-0, Lorenzo Romar’s team has gone 3-3 and has fallen back into a crowd of teams vying for the top seed in the Pac-12 tournament in early March. Their loss to USC drops them into a tie with the Trojans, Colorado, and Utah—all looking up at the Oregon Ducks and their 7-2 conference record.
USC avenged their collapse and subsequent heart-breaking loss to the Huskies on January 3rd, when the Dawgs rallied from a 22-point deficit in the second half. This time, USC built an eleven-point lead at halftime and kept scoring to stymie several comeback attempts by UW in the second half.
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The Huskies played with heart, never giving up against a confident team playing for a suddenly energized home crowd, but in the end they had no answer for USC star Nikola Jovanovic, who put up a season-high 28 points. Jovanovic scored eight points over the final six minutes after another Huskies rally cut the deficit to five to put the game away.
USC focused its defensive attention (rightly so) on Andrew Andrews, the leading Pac-12 scorer. Andrews scored 15 points on a miserable night shooting. He was only 3-14 on the day, contributing to an awful team shooting effort—the Dawgs shot on 36.4% from the field. In games like this, the Huskies have to batten down the hatches and battle teams on both ends of the floor.
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They shot poorly, but better defense down the stretch would have at least given them a chance to pull this game out. If they can’t figure out how to stop opposing teams from scoring, one poor shooting game in the tournament will bounce them out.