Brown scores 21 points, Huskies rally for win over Cal in Pac-12 home opener
Terrell Brown Jr. energized the crowd, leading Washington on a late run in the second half Wednesday night against visiting California.
And the crowd, in turn, helped fuel the Huskies’ late rally.
“They give us energy,” Brown said after the Huskies rallied for a 64-55 win in their Pac-12 home opener. “We love playing at home.”
Playing at Hec Edmundson Pavilion for the first time since late December, UW capitalized on that energy late, ending the game on a 17-4 run after trailing by as many as nine points in the second half.
The decisive run started when Brown — who leads the conference with 20.7 points per game — started to heat up, scoring 18 of his game-high 21 points after the break.
The Huskies (7-7, 2-2 Pac-12) spent much of the second half trying to close the gap Cal created earlier on, and Brown finally evened the game eight minutes in, first bringing the crowd to their feet when he scored on a contested layup and made the free throw that followed to make it 44-44 with 12:17 to go.
Cal responded, though, and held on to a slim margin for the next six minutes until Brown sunk a pair of free throws with 6:35 left to give the Huskies a 52-51 lead they never lost.
P.J. Fuller made a pair of free throws following a flagrant foul call, pushing the gap to three points, and on the ensuing possession, Brown ignited the crowd again.
As the shot clock was winding down, Brown started to move toward the hoop, sending Cal’s Kuany Kuany to his heels, faked with a pivot to his right, turned and lofted a short jumper as his defender fell to the court.
The shot rolled around the rim before dropping into the hoop as the crowd roared.
“I’m watching the ball go up in the air, and I see it like roll around and I’m like, ‘That’s going in.’ It went in, and the building just erupted,” Huskies guard Daejon Davis said. “It was crazy.”
UW’s lead was five with 5:07 remaining, and the basket surely seemed to propel the Huskies to their eventual nine-point victory.
The crowd energized, the Huskies scored again on their next two trips down the floor. Fuller launched a 3-pointer, then Nate Roberts threw down a rim-rattling dunk from the baseline to push the lead to double digits with 3:37 left.
The Huskies closed the game on a 17-4 run to wrap up their second conference win.
“The crowd helped us win tonight, because when we needed the defense to step up, the crowd was as loud as it gets, and our guys feed off that,” Huskies coach Mike Hopkins said. “And that’s the difference.”
In addition to Brown’s eighth 20-plus point performance of the season, Davis finished with eight points, seven assists and six steals and Roberts had a double-double with 10 points and 12 rebounds.
Emmitt Matthews Jr. added another nine points and five rebounds, and Fuller and Cole Bajema each contributed seven points.
The Huskies combined to shoot 22-for-52 (42.3 percent) from the floor, and much of their scoring started on the defensive end, with 20 points coming on fast breaks, and 19 off turnovers.
They tallied 14 steals against Cal — and have finished with double-digit steals in each of their four conference games to this point.
The Golden Bears finished 24-for-48 (50 percent) from the floor, with Jordan Shepherd leading their 10 scorers with a team-high 12 points, but UW’s disruptive defense held Cal to four points in the final seven minutes.
“No matter what we’re in, if we’re playing with energy we feel like we can stop a lot of teams and force turnovers,” Davis said. “It just goes to show that we need those turnovers sometimes, when guys come into our building and (are) making shots on the road.
“But, when we get those takeaways, it kind of switches the momentum to our side. And we feel that, so we just try to keep that going every game.”
The Huskies took control early in the first half, grabbing their first lead on their first possession on a short turnaround jumper from Matthews, and kept it for much of the next 15 minutes.
But, the Golden Bears stuck around, and shot 15-of-27 (55.6 percent) from the floor in the half to take a seven-point lead by the break.
Bajema — who has connected on 12-of-17 of his 3-point attempts in UW’s past three games — pushed the Huskies’ lead as high as nine on one sequence midway through the first half.
After hitting a 3-pointer from the corner as part of an 8-0 run, Bajema scored again on the next possession, faking another attempt from the perimeter before driving into the paint for an underhanded layup and drawing a foul. He made the ensuing free throw to push the lead to 19-10 with 10:15 left.
Moments later, Davis swiped his fourth steal of the half and broke free for a dunk in response to a 3-pointer.
But, Cal controlled the half from that point on, closing on a 21-6 run in the final seven minutes, and ended the half on a layup from Marsalis Roberson that beat the buzzer to make it 34-27.
The Huskies host Stanford on Saturday afternoon before traveling to play Oregon State and Oregon next week.
This story was originally published January 12, 2022 at 9:08 PM with the headline "Brown scores 21 points, Huskies rally for win over Cal in Pac-12 home opener."
