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Huskies Forget to Duck, Get KO'd Early by Oregon

The UW basketball team was thoroughly embarrassed in Eugene on Sunday night.
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On Sunday night, it made no difference who coached the University of Washington basketball team.

Will Conroy, Mike Hopkins or Hec Edmundson.

From the opening tip, the rudderless Huskies took one look at a talented and intimidating Oregon team — a group that played like it belonged in the NBA with its deep 3-point shooters and fiercely dunking big men — and the guys in the dark purple shirts and bright red faces turned and went the other way.

At Knight Arena in Eugene, the Ducks put a humbling 84-56 beatdown on their visitors from Seattle that was cringeworthy.

Hopkins was the smart one. For the second consecutive game, he was missing in action, stuck in COVID-19 protocols somewhere, nowhere near this demolition.

His basketball first lieutenant and coaching stand-in, Conroy, could do nothing to get the Huskies (9-8 overall, 4-3 Pac-12) to go toe to toe the Ducks (12-6, 5-2), who were coming off upsets of No. 3 UCLA and No. 5 USC the week before.

Daejon Davis hands off to PJ Fuller in Eugene, Oregon.

Daejon Davis hands off to PJ Fuller on Sunday.

The UW was so bad on this night it fell behind by 16 points with barely nine minutes played.

By the 15-minute mark of the half, the Huskies were so inept they had scored just eight points on two Nate Roberts tip-ins and four free throws.

They didn't drop in a jumper of any kind until Jamal Bey sank a 3-pointer with 1:40 left in the opening half. 

At the halftime horn, these thoroughly manhandled Huskies ran to the locker room staring at an outrageous 48-13 deficit.

They had hit just 4 of 27 shots in the half, with Terrell Brown, the Pac-12's leading scorer, making only 1 of 9 attempts to begin. Brown finished with a team-high 14 points on miserable 3-of-16 shooting.

They were viciously dunked on three times, twice by Oregon's 6-foot-11, 250-pound sophomore man child named Frank Kepnang, who hails from Cameroon. 

By the half, the Huskies had committed 14 turnovers on their way to a season-high 22, five more than their previous worst.

Daejon Davis and Oregon's Will Richardson battle.

Daejon Davis and Oregon's Will Richardson battle. 

The UW's 2-3 zone, which had been so effective lately, stopped no one. When Kepnang wasn't slamming shots through, Ducks guard Will Richardson stood out at 30 feet and drained 3-pointers with ease. Richardson led all scorers with 21 points while hitting 8 of 11 shots from the floor.

In the second half, Conroy liberally substituted as both teams played sloppily and ran out the clock.

Somehow the Huskies, who host Colorado and Utah this coming week, had morphed back into last year's team that usually had nothing to offer the opposition while finishing a dreadful 5-21. For their sake, hopefully they'll revert back to competitors.

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