Buffaloes Shut Down Brown But UW Can't Respond, Lose 78-64

The Huskies close out their week-long road trip by dropping two of three outings.

The plan for Pac-12 basketball teams against the University of Washington moving forward is pretty obvious: Shut down Terrell Brown, the league's leading scorer, and take your chances with the rest of the Husky roster.

Utah couldn't make it work.

Colorado did it well.

On Sunday afternoon, the Buffaloes bottled up Brown in the opening half like no one else has this season, used their defensive ferocity to lead by as many as 17 points and sent the Huskies home from Boulder with a disheartening 78-64 defeat.

Brown didn't score for the game's first 11 minutes. He had just 3 at halftime. He had two shots harshly swatted away. He knocked down only 4 of 16 attempts. He never really could get going, finishing with 12 points, his second-lowest output of the season and 9 below his average. 

Against Utah, his teammates picked up the slack.

At the CU Events Center, they were looking only for the first flight home.

Mike Hopkins' Huskies (6-7 overall, 1-2 Pac-12) lost two of their three outings on the week-long road trip through Arizona, Utah and Colorado, playing hard but playing predictable. 

Live and die with Brown.

Only Cole Bajema responded with any offense when things got tough against Colorado (11-3, 2-1), putting on another sizzling 3-point shooting display, but he alone wasn't nearly enough to save this one. 

A 6-foot-7 sophomore from Lynden, Washington, Bajema came off the bench and served up a career-high 18 points against the Buffs, draining 6 of 7 shots behind the line, this coming after 15-point showing on 5-for-8 from 3-point range in Salt Lake City.

Most of the UW starting lineup was a problem. While forward Emmitt Matthews Jr. supplied 16 points, guard Daejon Davis provided only 7 and guard Jamal Bey and center Nate Roberts were good for just 2 points each. 

The Huskies made it a game for 13 minutes, leading for the last time at 23-22 on Matthews Jr.'s driving one-hander. 

The Buffs pulled away for good with an 11-0 run, 7 of them coming from 6-foot-10 sophomore forward Tristan da Silva, younger brother for former Stanford standout Oscar da Silva. The sibling finished with a career-best 22 points, hitting 9 of 15 shots from inside and out.

Down 39-28 at halftime, the UW had just one run left in it over the final 20 minutes and cut a 15-point deficit to 5, at 48-43 with 12:24 to play. But that was it. Brown and his guys were done early.

The Huskies next come home to host the California Golden Bears (9-7, 2-3) on Wednesday night and the Stanford Cardinal (8-4, 1-1) on Saturday afternoon.

That'll give Hopkins a couple of days to see if he can find a few more scorers. He gets almost no points from his inside players, a season-long dilemma that prevents this team from being no better than hovering around the .500 mark.

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