Washington's losing streak extended to seven games with loss to Arizona State

Washington still has yet to figure out how to play defense and rebound the basketball without Robert Upshaw in the lineup, and when the offense isn't firing on all cylinders for almost the entire game, things just aren't going to work out.

Arizona State made four of its last five field goal attempts while the Huskies missed six of their last seven. And the only miss by ASU during that late run was rebounded by the Sun Devils. The late run was the first time Washington was really out of it, but it came at just the right time for UW to have no chance to come back, leading to the final score of 78-68 in favor of ASU.

Gerry Blakes was unstoppable for ASU, at one point scoring nine straight points for the Sun Devils. He finished with 23 points on 8-13 shooting, also tallying seven rebounds. Just as difficult for UW to match up against was Savon Goodman, who poured in 19 of his own and grabbed a game-high 13 rebounds. Shawn Kemp Jr. countered Goodman's rebounding effort with a season-high of... eight. As the sole big man, that just won't get things done.

The glass was where Washington's lack of size was the most apparent: ASU had more offensive rebounds than Washington had defensive rebounds. Kentucky shouldn't even be able to do that. It is really embarrassing. UW's issue can't really be fixed either, with the players still giving maximum effort and being limited by just a plain lack of ability to rebound.

For most of the first half the Sun Devils held a moderate lead, with Washington briefly taking a small lead. UW did hold a lead that rose all the way to six points at one point in the second half, but is was not enough. The game was close throughout, with 16 lead changes taking place, but the Dawgs ended up on the short end of this one to extend Lorenzo Romar's longest losing streak in his tenure at UW to seven games.

Nigel Williams-Goss led the Huskies with 20 points on 7-18 shooting and had six assists. Andrew Andrews scored 19 on a more efficient 6-11 shooting including going 3-6 from deep. Coming off the bench, Darin Johnson looked good as well, getting to the foul line and converting when he got there. He scored nine despite making only one field goal attempt.

Next week the Dawgs will travel to Pullman for a game in a week. Should be really, really high scoring.