SEATTLE — To snap their three-year winless streak against ranked teams, Mike Hopkins believed the Washington men’s basketball team needed to balance its emotions, execute the game plan and match No. 23 Auburn’s toughness.
“These are the games where there’s no motivational talk,” the UW coach said. “They know who you’re playing. They know the opportunity and now you got to go out and execute.
“The biggest thing is you can’t be too high and you can’t be too low. You just got to be able to be stoic and poised against a team like this. And you got to play for 40 minutes. You got to be tough. We’ve done that.”
Not on Wednesday night and certainly not for 40 minutes.
The Huskies fell behind by 15 points in the first half, gave the Tigers a fight for about 10 minutes midway through the game and faded at the end during a deflating 84-61 defeat and a 12th straight loss against a ranked team.
Washington (9-4, 1-1) targeted its nonconference finale as chance to reboot a season that’s included a couple of surprising wins and upset losses.
“Who we’re going to be for the rest of the season starts right now,” the Huskies tweeted hours before facing the Tigers.
And yet, UW produced arguably its worst offensive outing of the season in front of 8,502 at Alaska Airlines Arena.
Hopkins cautioned the Huskies to not repeat the mistakes from their first encounter four years ago that led to an 88-66 loss at Auburn.
“When you’re playing Auburn, they’re an aggressive team,” Hopkins said. “They play exceptionally hard. They have great energy just like their head coach. They crash the glass. They try to create havoc and steals. That’s what they do.
“In the first half of our game when we played them three years ago, we had nine turnovers in first half that equaled 20 points and we were down 20 at halftime. So that’s what you have to do.”
This time, Washington committed just seven turnovers that led to two points in the first half.
However, the Huskies were undone by a horrendous shooting performance in which they converted just four of their first 27 attempts while falling behind 27-12 with 3:20 left before the break.
That’s when PJ Fuller II stepped in front of a pass at the top of the key, outraced a defender and converted a fast break layup despite being fouled that gave a mostly silent purple-clad Husky crowd a reason to cheer.
Fuller missed the ensuing free throw, but his basket ignited an 11-2 run for Washington, which went into halftime down 31-23.
The Huskies trimmed their deficit to 39-33 with 16:12 left in the second half after Koren Johnson’s layup.
Auburn answered with a 15-2 run over the next five minutes to go up 54-35 and essentially put the game away.
Late in the game, the Tigers connected on nine straight field goals and shot 55.9% in the game and 72.4% in the second half. Johni Broome and Jaylin Williams each had 18 points and eight rebounds for Auburn (10-2).
Keion Brooks Jr. had 15 points and Johnson 12 for Washington.
The Huskies hosts USC on Dec. 30 to resume Pac-12 play.
