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UW Basketball Team Finally Opens Pac-12 Play at Arizona

The Huskies have turned in just two games over the past month because of COVID.
Dan Raley|
UW Basketball Team Finally Opens Pac-12 Play at Arizona
UW Basketball Team Finally Opens Pac-12 Play at Arizona

Lucky for the University of Washington basketball team, Mike Hopkins' guys flew out of town just before the latest round of snow hit.

Unfortunately for them, they landed in Tucson, Arizona, where the Huskies have never found much comfort, no matter how nice the weather or how plush the accommodations.

On Monday night, the UW (5-5 overall, 0-0 league) open their Pac-12 Conference schedule against Tommy Lloyd's 9th-ranked Arizona Wildcats (11-1, 1-0), almost a month later than planned, making up a game that was scrapped on Dec. 4 because of COVID complications. Tipoff is 5 p.m. PT and the match-up will be shown on Pac-12 Networks.

Lloyd, of course, is the former Gonzaga assistant and first-year Arizona coach who has handled his promotion seamlessly, turning the Wildcats back into something resembling the Zags. 

Big team. Big following. Big winner.

On the other hand, the Huskies will try to survive at McKale Center without any post players to speak of who will scare anyone, relying almost exclusively on a lineup of guards and wings. This has made them a break-even team, even after playing a non-league schedule that was so soft it realistically should have left them unbeaten or close to it.

On top of that, this very well might be a UW group simply playing out a 20-game string before great change takes place in the program. Hopkins hasn't been able to win with much consistency over three seasons now, with his Huskies dropping 39 of their past 53 games. Not many people survive a downturn like that.

This marks just the third game in 37 days for the Huskies, who were idled for a long time by COVID-19 that swept through the roster and it's unclear how effective they'll be. They're coming off a lopsided 68-52 defeat to Utah Valley at home.

While Lloyd brings a Northwest reminder to this outing, Husky senior guard Terrell Brown will face his former team. Actually, this well-traveled player will go up against his second former team in three outings, having dealt with Seattle U before Christmas. 

The 6-foot-3 Brown, who started 9 of 26 games for Arizona and averaged 7.3 points per game last year, currently ranks sixth in the nation in scoring with a 21.4-point average and should help keep things interesting for a while.

Alongside him, Hopkins could start 6-foot-4 junior guard and TCU transfer PJ Fuller for the first time after hinting he might make some changes following the Utah Valley loss. Coming off the bench, Fuller is the UW's third-leading scorer at 9.9 per game.

Arizona, however, has the luxury of trotting out three imported players who do a lot of damage, including a pair of fearsome big men. Foreign basketball recruiting is something Lloyd does exceptionally well.

Benedict Mathurin, a 6-foot-6 freshman guard from Montreal, Canada, will offset Brown with his 18.3 scoring average. 

Up front, the Wildcats have a distinctive advantage over nearly every team they play, turning to 6-foot-11, 245-pound sophomore Azuolas Tubelis and 7-foot-1, 230-pound junior Christian Koloko. One is from Lithuania, the other from Cameroon. Tubelis averages 15.3 points and 6.5 rebounds an outing, Koloko 13.6 points, 7.3 rebounds and 3.3 blocks per game.

The Huskies may wish this game had been permanently erased from the schedule.

Overall, Arizona owns them at McKale Center, winning 32 of the 41 games the UW has played there.

Curiously, Hopkins' UW teams have won a pair of games in Tucson, prevailing 69-63 in 2020 and 67-60 in 2019. Of course, he had NBA-bound players such as Isaiah Stewart, Jaden McDaniels, Jaylen Nowell and Matisse Thybulle getting it done for him. 

Those days are gone, though. Even Nowell's little brother, Shane, a 6-foot-6 freshman guard from Seattle, suits up for the Wildcats.

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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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