Someone suggested before the game that the Washington Huskies were almost in a position coming into tonight's game where they couldn't win.
A loss to the Cal Golden Bears who they had already beaten on the road would clearly be disastrous, but even with a standard 20-point win it would just be sort of expected because there needed to be a sense of urgency and that's just what they've done to people at Hec Ed all season.
So how about UW beating Cal by 32 points like they stole something?
What's most impressive given that UW coach Lorenzo Romar had identified intensity as the problem is that the outcome was never really in doubt - the Huskies came out active on defense and maintained their intensity level.
Aside from the seemingly nebulous claim of intensity doing the trick, it's difficult to pinpoint one thing that went so much better for UW - everything just seemed to be going their way.
Most notably after their recent struggles, they shot 17 of 31 from beyond the arc with Isaiah Thomas leading the 3-point barrage shooting 6 of 8 from deep and scoring a team highs of 23 points and nine assists. Matthew Bryan-Amaning added another solid game to his resume for the season with 18 points and nine rebounds. People have been asking about Venoy Overton's play lately, but he finished right behind Thomas with seven assists and eight points.
So perhaps in being the type of performance we saw during non-conference play, some people will merely yawn and say, "ho hum." But the main point is that the team showed that we can't yet count them out - as long as there are still Pac-10 games left to play, they can still win the conference and find themselves with a spot in the NCAA tournament.