Inside The Huskies

Huskies Are Best of the Worst, Beat Penn State

The UW basketball team rallies from a 13-point first-half deficit to win.
Dan Raley|
Danny Sprinkle gives his UW team marching orders during a timeout.
Danny Sprinkle gives his UW team marching orders during a timeout. | Skylar Lin Visuals

In a match-up of the Big Ten's two worst teams, and in it what actually turned out to be a most entertaining game, the University of Washington basketball team finished first.

The Huskies rallied from a 13-point, first-half deficit, survived a 3-point shot at the buzzer that missed and emerged from Penn State with a hard-earned 75-73 victory on Saturday in State College.

Yet it took plenty of unexpected role-playing for the UW (13-12 overall, 4-10 conference) to get this done, with Great Osobor turning into a point guard, Mekhi Mason doing his best Steph Curry impersonation and Franck Kepnang, well, being the Kepnang of old.

Best of all, the 17th-place Huskies had their chances of making the 15-team Big Ten Tournament greatly improve by downing the Nittany Lions (13-13, 3-12), who had their losing streak extended to seven.

"That was a gutsy win," UW coach Danny Sprinkle said. "That easily could be our best game of the year, given the circumstances of what it meant, for conference standings, trying to get in that conference tournament -- trying to climb our way out of the bottom. I thought our guys did real good job of staying poised."

Osobor, the UW's 6-foot-8 power forward, turned in a double-double, but not like one would think -- he finished with 13 rebounds and 10 assists, but managed just 6 points, thus preventing the Huskies from having their first triple-double in school history. But it was enough to win.

Mason finished with 20 points, to share game honors with Penn State's Ace Baldwin, by canning a career-best 6 of 11 3-point shots., including the go-ahead points.

Then there was the 6-foot-11 Kepnang, who came up with a season-high 14 points and 5 blocks in 27 minutes of play, in his best and longest showing in more than a year, continuing to come back from early season knee surgery.

"Frank Kepnang, with the energy he brought, he saved probably at least 10 points, with blocking three or four dunks and lay-ins," Sprinkle said. "He makes game-changing plays."

With his inspired play, the big man saved the Huskies, who trailed 31-18 at one point, from going down to what easily could have been another Big Ten road defeat.

Kepnang provided 10 first-half points, which included a pair of thundering dunks, to lead his team in scoring at the break and he blocked 4 shots in that time.

Eight of his points came inside the final 4:02 of the half when, with his team trailing 31-23, he slammed one in off, what else, an Osobor feed, capping the Huskies' 7-0 run to get back in it.

The next time down the floor, Kepnang dropped in a one-hander from the baseline and the UW had climbed within four, at 31-27.

With 53.3 seconds left in the half, the big man from Cameroon took a big step toward the basket, dunked emphatically, drew the foul call and completed a three-point play to make it a four-point deficit, at 38-34, going into the locker room.

"He's one of those guys with his activity on the court, and his aggressiveness and him flexing, brings an added dimension we missed," Sprinkle said. "You could see the difference he makes."

Records aside, the game was highly competitive, with 17 lead changes, including 15 in the second half.

Trailing 68-67, Mason put the Huskies ahead for good with a corner 3-pointer off a pass from Osobor with 3:49 remaining.

Yet it was hang on time as these teams took it down to the wire, with Baldwin letting fly with an off-balance 3-pointer that missed with Osobor guarding him as the buzzer sounded.

"For our guys to keep responding and keep believing, I was real proud of them," Sprinkle said.

The Huskies now return home to face Rutgers (12-13, 5-9) on Wednesday at Alaska Airlines, needing yet another win to become tourney eligible over one of the team's standing in their way.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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