SEATTLE — Last March, UCLA defeated Washington at Alaska Airlines Arena to clinch the Pac-12 regular season title and the No. 1 seed in the Pac-12 tournament.
With a Stanford loss Wednesday night, UCLA is locked in to the No. 2 seed regardless of what happens in its final three halves of the regular season.
But for stretches of the first half of Thursday night’s faceoff with the Huskies, the Bruins clearly looked like just the second-best team in Alaska Airlines Arena. UCLA trails Washington 45-41 at the half.
UCLA was led early on by sophomore guard Jordan Adams, who scored the Bruins’ first five points and seven of their first 11 points to jump out to an 11-4 lead.
Thanks to a few quick moves to the basket from Washington guard Andrew Andrews, the Huskies had things tied up at the first media timeout, 11-11.
The opening minutes’ punch and counterpunch very much reflected the entire opening half, in which the lead changed close to 15 times and neither team led by more than seven points in the closing 15 minutes.
Guard C.J. Wilcox led the Huskies in scoring with 13 points on five-of-nine shooting. Perris Blackwell, a senior forward for Washington, came off the bench to score eight points, frequently proving a mismatch for redshirt senior forwards David Wear and Travis Wear.
Adams followed up a prolific second-half scoring effort on Sunday with yet another impressive half. He drained five of his eight field goal attempts for a team-high 15 points. Freshman guard Bryce Alford drained two early three-point shots to finish the half with eight points, while sophomore forward/center Tony Parker added six points.
The Bruins are shooting 48.4 percent from the field to Washington’s 58.8 percent.