SEATTLE – If some Arizona Wildcats weren’t feeling too good this week, you wouldn’t have known it Friday in their 86-62 win over Washington at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.
Not when T.J. McConnell posted his first UA double-double with 10 points and 10 assists, and while Stanley Johnson (20 points) and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (17 points)Â are each shooting 7 for 10 from the field.
Overall, Arizona shot 53 percent from the field while Washington was held to just 35.8 percent, meaning the absences of center Dusan Ristic and guard Parker Jackson-Cartwright were negligible.
Ristic stayed home in Tucson on Friday while recovering from a bacterial infection that hospitalized him earlier this week, UA trainer Justin Kokoskie said, while Jackson-Cartwright missed his third straight game after suffering a concussion on Jan. 28 against Oregon.
People are also reading…
Yet despite all of that, Arizona mostly coasted throughout the game, in a venue where they usually struggle with the Huskies.
Up by 19 at halftime, the Wildcats couldn’t expand the lead in the second half and actually allowed Washington to rattle off eight straight points midway through the half to cut UA’s lead to just 65-54 with 8:16.
But it never went any better for the Huskies. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson dunked to make it 67-54 with 7:56 to go and by the time he did so again, with five minutes left, it was 79-56 and the game was all but over.
The win improved Arizona to 21-3 overall and 9-2 in the Pac-12 entering a game Sunday at Washington State. The Huskies dropped to 14-10 and 3-9.
In the first half, Arizona took a 43-24 halftime lead. The Wildcats kept Washington to just 31-percent shooting and hit 56.3 percent themselves. McConnell had eight points and eight assists in the half to lead UA offensively while Johnson had 10 points.
McConnell had a sprained right ankle earlier this week, according to Kokoskie, but missed no practice time and obviously showed no ill effects in the first half tonight.
Both teams struggled to shoot well initially, with the Huskies briefly taking a 7-6 lead on a layup by Andrew Andrews with 14:43 to go in the half.
But Arizona kept Washington to a 1-for-10 shooting stretch over the middle of the first half and took leads of up to 22 points,, leading 36-14 with 5:41 left when Hollis-Jefferson made a layup.
The Wildcats later ran into a little trouble, turning the ball over four times in less than three minutes, allowing Washington to pull within 36-18 when Andrews came back for a layup with 4:24 left.
