Franck Kepnang Returns, But UW's Winning Ways Don't

The University of Washington basketball team held an overdue reunion on Friday night at Alaska Airlines Arena that had to be a little emotional -- for the first time in nearly three months, the Huskies re-introduced Franck Kepnang to Great Osobor and the rest of gang in the heat of the battle.

Everyone seemed genuinely excited to see each other. Osobor and Kepnang were like long lost brothers. Osobor looked like a totally different player with his fellow big man beside him, still drawing plenty of defenders but getting free for 16 first-half points on his way to a team-high 19, plus he grabbed 9 rebounds. Coach Danny Sprinkle subbed one for the other and played them together.

Unfortunately, it still wasn't enough to pull the Huskies, the Big Ten's last-place team, out of their lingering midseason funk as they fell to UCLA 65-60 and dropped their sixth consecutive game before a near capacity crowd.

Any scouting report the Burins had on these guys went out the window with the reappearance of the 6-foot-11 Kepnang. Suddenly Mick Cronin's team couldn't gang up on the 6-foot-8 Osobor, the UW's leading scorer, like everyone else has been doing without paying for it. The UW was no pushover in this outing.

"Franck is so awesome," Osobor said of his teammate. "It's just contagious. He gets on the glass and plays hard. He lightens the load -- I don't have to bang for 40 minutes."

The best example of the manpower turnabout came with a 1:44 left in the opening half when Osobor tried to back in and use his trademark spin move to get to the basket. Three Bruins had him surrounded. Osobor still got off a shot that missed, but Kepnang came flying through the key to grab the ball and slam it through in one motion.

Kepnang played 21 minutes and finished with 7 points and 8 rebounds, and he blocked a pair of shots.

"I was on a minutes restriction," he said. "I was able to play freely."

While the Huskies (10-10 overall, 1-8 Big Ten) had reinforcements inside, they still couldn't shoot from around the perimeter. They missed 13 of their first 14 attempts from behind the line and that cost them this game. Meantime, UCLA (14-6, 5-4) won because it had a surplus of 3-point shooters who canned 9 of 17.

Sprinkle acknowledged his team's 3-point shooting has been a season-long hurdle.

"It's impossible at this level," he said of trying to win without some accuracy behind the line, with his team going 5-for-22 against UCLA. "It's been our deal all year. If we were shooting at a high level, we'd probably have 15 wins, we really would. But we're not."

Three minutes into the game, the Huskies sent Kepnang onto the floor for the first time since early November, when he suffered yet another knee issue that required surgery. He missed 17 games. He was welcomed back with a huge ovation.

The big man from Cameroon gave his team a big boost right away, dropping in a hook shot, getting fouled and converting the three-point play to pull the UW within 13-12.

Kepnang, who wore a rubber sleeve on his right knee, next got tangled up with Skyy Clark, who scored UCLA's first 9 points on three treys, and that left the Bruins guard limping to the point he had to leave the game temporarily.

The Huskies trailed just 36-32 at halftime, but UCLA took charge after the break and went up by 11 with not quite nine minutes played. Still, the UW hung in there.

DJ Davis got the home team as close as 58-55, hitting one of the Huskies' rare 3-pointers with 1:40 left to play, and Zoom Diallo brought the deficit to 60-57 with a rebound shot with 41.3 seconds left, but UCLA wouldn't buckle and swept the season series from these guys.

Sprinkle's team doesn't play again for eight days, traveling to Minnesota (10-9, 2-6), the closest team to them at the bottom of the standings, for a 9 a.m. PT tipoff.

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