Double misery for UW

LUBBOCK, TEXAS - Texas Tech handed Washington its first loss Thursday night, a result Red Raiders fans got to celebrate twice.

Those fans swarmed the court when Mike Singletary sank what seemed to be a winning 3-pointer at the end of regulation.

However, a review showed that the shot had come after the buzzer, so the court was cleared, and the teams returned for five more minutes.

“I was worried in the overtime,” Tech coach Pat Knight said. “Take that adrenaline flow like that, you get on a high like that and then be told you have to go into overtime. I was really worried that we’d come out flat. … But we ended up winning twice.”

In a battle of unbeatens, the Red Raiders pulled away late in overtime, 99-92, at United Spirit Arena.

That allowed their fans to storm the court again.

And it forced the Huskies to feel the sting of losing again.

“I think our team felt like, ‘Wow, we’ve got another shot at this,’ ” coach Lorenzo Romar said about the end of regulation. “I think our team was pretty excited.”

Venoy Overton scored the first basket of overtime, and UW tied the game for the 16th and final time with a little less than a minute and a half to go.

About 20 second later, an inbound pass from Matthew Bryan-Amaning was stolen and turned into points, and the Red Raiders ran away from there.

However, that isn’t where Romar or any of the Huskies thought they lost the game.

“We played horribly in the first half,” said Elston Turner, who had 15 points in his first start of the season. “Basically we beat ourselves. We gave up (too many) points, and about 20 or 30 of them were our own mistakes. We had turnovers, missed free throws. That was a big loss.”

The most dramatic of the misses belonged to Turner.

He was fouled with 4.8 second remaining in regulation, and sinking either free throw would have put UW ahead. However, he missed the first, endured a Tech time out, and then came out and missed again.

“It wasn’t pressure or nothing,” he said. “They just bounced off. They both felt good.”

After the game, the Huskies’ consensus was that they had been doomed by a combination of three factors: facing a good team, playing on the road for the first time, and not bringing their best game.

“I think there’s a third in all of it – and maybe the last one the biggest contributor,” Romar said. “I think we created more trouble than we should have on the defensive end, and we missed foul shots.”

The Red Raiders shredded Washington’s defense in the first half .548 accuracy (17-of-31 ). In the second half, the Huskies held them to .370 (10-of-27). But that only got UW even after 40 minutes.

Texas Tech (8-0) was led by junior John Roberson, who had 25 points and seven assists while playing what Romar called “about as good a game as you can play as a point guard.”

Six other Raiders scored eight or more points, including Singletary who had a double-double: 16 points, 12 rebounds.

Washington (5-1) was led by Quincy Pondexter’s career-high 31 points. But Isaiah Thomas struggled from the field again, hitting four of 15 shots on his way to 18 points. Thomas has shot 9-of-31 in the past two games.

“Shots not falling,” he said. “It is what it is. … I’m just not finishing shots.”

Yet for all of the Huskies’ failings, they received the reprieve of overtime. And they seemed surprised they couldn’t make that pay off.

“I thought we were going to win,” Pondexter said. “There was no doubt on my mind. You see it sometimes on ESPN where a team thinks they’ve won, fans storm the floor, and they don’t win. The other team comes back and has the momentum and they win. But that wasn’t the case. (We lost) twice. It was definitely surreal. It happened twice.”

Washington returns to Hec Edmundson Pavilion at 7 p.m. Sunday, meeting Cal State Northridge.

Don Ruiz, 253-597-8808

don.ruiz@thenewstribune.com

blog.thenewstribune.com/uwsports