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UW vs. WSU Halftime Score: Cougars Emerge From Rough First Half At Hec Ed Up 24-17

What a perfectly inappropriate game during which to have a tribute to legendary Pac-10 coach John Wooden.

With 11 minutes left, the Washington Huskies and Washington State Cougars were a combined 8-for-42 with 15 turnovers as described by Don Ruiz of The News Tribune in his live blog.

Yet after being down 11-4 at that point, the Huskies ended up taking a 15-13 lead with just over five minutes left.

There's no need to do any complex math on this game - ugly doesn't begin to properly describe this first half and neither the old fall back explanations of "nerves" nor particularly stellar defense would serve as an adequate explanation.

It was a combination of missed layups and front-rim shots on UW's part and absolutely inexplicable decision-making and unforced turnovers by WSU.

In the words of UCLA product Marques Johnson on the FSN broadcast, there was "a lot of activity out here; very little achievement".

If you wanted to impose a statistical explanation on this so-called basketball game, you'd almost have to begin with shooting percentages: that UW shot 22.2 percent meant that WSU could establish a seven point lead shooting 8-for-25 themselves. It's not one player that's struggling for UW, but that their leading scorer is Justin Holiday with five points on 2-for-6 shooting certainly has to say something.

And it's not much better for WSU, which was led by star Klay Thompson with eight points on 2-for-6 shooting.