Huskies Lose Davis to Re-Injury, Can't Hang with UCLA
Facing 17th-ranked UCLA, things looked bleak for the University of Washington basketball team when Daejon Davis drove to the basket, got tangled up and re-injured his right shoulder.
The same shoulder that earlier cost Davis three weeks of play and sent his team into a losing spiral.
The same limb that prompted UW coach Mike Hopkins to describe his senior guard as "a one-armed man."
Fifteen minutes into Monday night's pandemic make-up game with it tied at 15, Davis was done for the night.
The Huskies (14-14 overall, 9-9 Pac-12) gamely hung in there for the rest of the half before they, too, couldn't respond, losing to the Bruins 77-66 at Alaska Airlines Arena.
For those in the white shirts, it was painful to watch, painful to feel.
UCLA (22-6, 14-5) outscored its hosts 16-2 to open the second half, erase a 29-25 deficit at the break, build a lead as large as 22 points and sweep the season series.
That hurt a lot.
Bruins forward Jamie Jaquez Jr., a 6-foot-7 junior from Camarillo, California, personally decided things himself with a career-high 30 points on 11-for-16 shooting. He also chipped in a team-best 9 rebounds as UCLA held a healthy 41-28 advantage on the boards.
Davis was able to return to the bench, though not to the action. He could only sit and rub his injured shoulder while watching his team try to push on without him.
A Stanford transfer, the 6-foot-3 senior guard from Seattle got his shoulder entangled with the Bruins' Tyger Campbell when he went down in obvious distress.
Davis didn't get up and play didn't stop until after the Bruins and gone up the floor and scored on a 3-pointer by Jaquez.
The UW guard was gingerly helped to the locker room. The Huskies immediately threw the ball away without him. Yet they were able to regroup some and build their four-point halftime lead when Terrell Brown Jr. finally got going.
The Pac-12's leading scorer went without a point for the first 16 minutes of the game but scored six quick ones to help give his team its brief advantage going into the break.
Brown finished with a team-high 20 points on 9-for-20 shooting.
Coming out of halftime, the Bruins were done messing around. They scored the first nine points with a Husky response to take charge for good. The UW didn't drop in a basket in the second half until Jamal Bey dropped in a one-hander with 15:41 left to play. Bey finished with 14 points.
Davis never stirred from the bench and probably won't play again anytime soon.
The UW also had to deal with the limited use of starting forward Emmitt Matthews Jr., who got in foul trouble early and was done after committing a flagrant foul with 6 minutes left. He finished with just 7 points.
Starting center Nate Roberts also fouled out of this one with three minutes remaining, leaving with 4 points and 9 rebounds.
The Huskies, after taking on two games in three nights, return to action against Oregon at home on Thursday night. The regular season is down to just a pair of games.
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