Seattle, WA (Sports Network) - The struggling Washington Huskies face a
formidable challenge on Thursday evening, as they entertain the eighth-ranked
Arizona Wildcats in a Pac-12 Conference affair.
Arizona ran roughshod through its non-conference foes this season, going 12-0,
and the team has been relatively successful since the start of conference
play, winning five of its first seven bouts. The Wildcats' losses have come
against two of the league's top teams in Oregon (70-66) and UCLA (84-73), and
they rebounded from the Jan. 24 setback to the Bruins to manhandle the USC
Trojans two days later (74-50). Arizona is 4-1 in true road games this season,
outscoring the opposition in those bouts by 12.6 points, and outrebounding
them by 8.4 caroms per contest.
Washington opened Pac-12 action with wins its first four games, but has since
dropped three in a row, the most recent of which being an 81-76 decision at
Oregon last Saturday. Still, the Huskies are four games over .500 on the year
(12-8), and they are 7-4 at home. UW has not lost four straight since 2008,
and that was also the last year it beat a top-10 foe at home (No. 5 UCLA).
Overall, the Huskies have won their last four home games against a ranked
opponent.
Arizona owns a 44-28 lead in the all-time series with Washington, but the
Huskies won the last meeting (70-54 in Seattle on Feb. 16, 2012) and have
claimed victory in 10 of the last 18 encounters overall.
Arizona is excelling at both ends of the court this season, averaging 75.5 ppg
while permitting just 62.0 ppg, both of which rank the team third in the
Pac-12, and its scoring margin of +13.5 has it first. The team boasts three
double-digit scorers in the form of Mark Lyons (14.9 ppg), Solomon Hill (13.5
ppg, 5.6 rpg) and Nick Johnson (13.3 ppg, 3.7 rpg). The Wildcats are shooting
45.4 percent from the floor, which includes a 36.8 percent effort from 3-point
range, while their foes connect on only 39.9 percent of their total shots, and
are guilty of nearly 15 turnovers per outing. Johnson hit for 14 points, Hill
had 13, Brandon Ashley chipped in 11, and Kaleb Tarczewski finished with 10,
all of which helped Arizona push its way past visiting USC last weekend. The
'Cats shot a lackluster 41 percent from the field, but held the Trojans to
just 28.1 percent. A 17-9 edge in points from the foul line certainly helped
the home team, as did the fact that USC committed 16 turnovers off which
Arizona scored 20 points.
Washington is the league's top 3-point shooting team (.370), but its overall
field goal percentage (.440) ranks it ninth. As a result, the team averages
69.4 ppg, and its defensive allowance yields 66.6 ppg, both of which rank UW
in the bottom half of the conference standings. The Huskies are fortunate in
that the Pac-12's second-leading scorer wears their uniform, as C.J. Wilcox is
averaging 19.0 ppg thanks to 3-point shooting effort that has him draining
41.9 percent of his attempts. Wilcox is a 46.8 percent shooter overall, and
converts his free throws at a 75.4 percent clip, and he adds 4.7 rebounds, 2.0
assists and more than a block per tilt to his impressive stat line. Scott
Suggs (12.2 ppg), Abdul Gaddy (11.4 ppg, 3.5 apg) and Aziz N'Diaye (10.5 ppg,
9.2 rpg) are all averaging double figures in the scoring column as well for
UW, which battled back to make a game of it at Oregon last Saturday, but just
didn't have enough in the tank as it fell by five points. Andrew Andrews came
off the bench to score a team-leading 15 points, and the Huskies shot 51.9
percent from the floor, going a stellar 8-of-12 from beyond the arc in the
process. For their part, the Ducks, who committed an unsightly 23 turnovers,
shot nearly 58 percent from the field, and used a 27-14 edge in points from
the foul line to pick up the hard-fought victory.
The Sports Network