SEATTLE (AP)—When Brandon Roy went to the bench with his fourth foul with 11:05 remaining, Washington were forced to turn somewhere else if the Huskies were going to beat in-state rival Gonzaga.
Freshman point guard Justin Dentmon took the challenge and ran with it.
Dentmon scored all 13 of his second-half points after Roy went out and led the No. 18 Huskies to a thrilling, 99-95 win over No. 6 Gonzaga on Sunday night
He shed coach Lorenzo Romar’s first-year demand that he distribute the ball more and reverted to his high-school days of dominant scoring.
“My coach in high school always told me, down the stretch is the time for me to take over,” said Dentmon, a native of Carbondale, Ill., who was playing before his mother, Stephanie, for the first time in two years.
“It’s just in me when the game is on the line.”
Washington needed it all to overcome the 43 points Gonzaga’s Adam Morrison put up.
The Bulldogs turned the 11-point lead Washington enjoyed while Roy was in the game into a 70-69 deficit for the Huskies. The senior’s head was encased in a towel and he looked left, right, down—everywhere in search of someone to pick up his team.
That’s where Dentmon came in.
There were nine lead changes over the final 11 minutes, but in the end Washington (7-0) had a 29-game home winning streak, the nation’s longest. Jamal Williams had 22 points and seven rebounds for the Huskies, who also earned their first win over Gonzaga in eight tries, dating to Dec. 30, 1997.
Morrison almost extended Gonzaga’s dominance over Washington and nearly ended the Huskies’ reign at home.
With second-leading scorer J.P. Batista sitting for more than 8 minutes of the second half because of four fouls of his own—plus point guard Derek Raivio being out since midway through the first half with a bruised lower back — Morrison was left on a nearly solo attempt at a comeback.
He nearly pulled it off.
The preseason All-America selection was at times unstoppable. He made 18 of 29 shots to match the career-high 43 points he scored in Gonzaga’s triple-overtime victory over Michigan State last month in the Maui Invitational.
“He’s the best offensive basketball player since Carmelo Anthony,” Romar said. “What do you do to stop him.”
When Washington cut off his drives to the basket, Morrison stepped away for fall-away field goals. When the always frenetic Husky defenders jumped out to challenge him defensively, he usually just jumped over them. His 32nd and 33rd points gave Gonzaga its first lead, 70-69, with 11 minutes to go.
“He made contested shots. He made uncontested shots,” Washington’s Williams said. “You couldn’t ask us to do anything else.”
Except to stop Morrison on Gonzaga’s final possession.
With 20.9 seconds left and Gonzaga down 97-95, Bulldogs coach Mark Few designed a play to get the ball to Morrison far out on the right wing. Morrison did, with night-long shadow Bobby Jones in his face. Morrison leaped and shot a 3-pointer from near the sideline with just under 10 seconds to go.
The shot was long. Gonzaga’s Sean Mallon grabbed the offensive rebound under the basket, but he missed his put back.
Jones then sealed the win with two free throws.
He said he was surprised Morrison shot so early, when a 2-point shot would have tied it.
“But he scored 43 points, so I’m sure he had a rhythm,” Jones said.
Guess so.
But so did Dentmon—for the first time in his collegiate career, when it counted most.
Dentmon’s penetration basket and three-point play gave Washington a 97-93 lead with 1:09 left. Morrison then missed a chance to retie it game when he missed a free throw on his three-point play opportunity with 58 seconds remaining.
“We see him try to take over in practice all the time,” Williams said. “I tell him, ‘JD, you don’t have to do that any more. You’re in college.
“But he chose the perfect time to do it.”
But with about 25 seconds left, Dentmon looked more like a freshman. He badly missed a 3-point shot with the shot clock at 4. Gonzaga called a timeout with 20.4 seconds remaining to set up the final, failed sequence.
After the game, Morrison and his Gonzaga mates went straight to its buses and did not talk. And Raivio could barely walk.
“I’m proud of my guys, they got us back in it with the hodgepodge lineup out there,” Few said. “We battled.
“We just didn’t come with enough plays at the end.”
