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Terrell Brown Jr. couldn't miss, scoring the first eight points for his University of Washington basketball team. A jumper here, a jumper there, buckets everywhere. Curiously, his teammates early on had trouble just hitting the rim.
On Thursday night against Oregon, Brown kept his guys in there during a tough spell and his teammates, namely Emmitt Matthews Jr. and Nate Roberts, got in a nice groove.
Brown and Matthews shared team scoring honors with 25 points each and the offensively challenged Roberts came up with a career-high 18 points before fouling out as the Huskies coasted to a 78-67 victory over the Ducks.
The 6-foot-11 Roberts scored five more than his career best against Montana last year and seven more than his season high against Utah.
It also helped that everyone eventually was able to settle down from their early misguided marksmanship, thus evening the score on a 28-point loss at Oregon last month.
It was weird.
After Brown dropped in 4 of his first 5 shots for an early 8-4 advantage, someone took the air out of the ball.
In a span of six minutes, the Huskies (15-14 overall, 10-9 Pac-12) launched no fewer than six airballs to enable Oregon (18-12, 11-8) to claim the lead and flirt with taking control of things.
Over three consecutive possessions, Matthews Jr. missed everything on consecutive shots from the baseline, followed by PJ sending up one from beyond the top of the key that touched absolutely nothing coming down.
All of the Huskies looked a little bewildered by this. It was like a golfer with a bad case of the yips. It was only momentary craziness, though it still wasn't done.
Trailing 13-8, reserve Langston Wilson put one up that overshot the rim by a wide margin, but quickly reclaimed the ball and scored. That was better.
Wilson next grabbed a rebound of Cole Bajema's errant free throw, tossed the ball up and it didn't come close to hitting anything. That was worse.
Finally, there was just one more big miss when Jamal Bey drove to the basket and put up a shot that descended well short of everything.
Amazingly, the Huskies came out of this county fair horror show trailing only 17-16 and really lacking only the stuffed animal.
Brown got hot again.
He hit a couple of foul-line jumpers around another bit of shooting catastrophe — Roberts whiffed on a ferocious two-hand dunk — but the UW would no longer make it tough on itself.
Tied at 20, Brown hit a pair of free throws that sent the Huskies on a 13-0 run.
Roberts actually put the ball on the floor and drove from the foul line to score, knocking over a Duck defender in the process but not getting called for it.
The Huskies headed to the locker room leading 33-23 and feeling pretty good about everything except having their egos bruised some on all those airballs.
Roberts, who had 7 points at half, turned into an absolute monster inside to open the second half. He helped the Huskies ease out to a 23-point advantage before Oregon chipped away at it. In one stretch, the big man scored 8 of 12 UW points to give his team a 56-33 lead.
The UW will close out the regular season against Oregon State in a Saturday afternoon game in which it will recognize its seniors.
Go to si.com/college/washington to read the latest Husky FanNation stories as soon as they’re published.
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