Huskies toss up threes at Cardinal

Stanford came out playing a zone. But Mike Jensen was in one.

And buoyed by Jensen's career-high 18 points — all coming on three-pointers — the Huskies avenged one of their most bitter defeats of the season and took another big step toward making a serious run at the Pac-10 regular-season title, beating Stanford 75-57 Thursday night at Edmundson Pavilion.

Jensen, a fifth-year senior playing the second-to-last home game of his UW basketball career, said he knew before tipoff he might be headed for a memorable game.

"There are some days when you are just shooting it and they are just falling," Jensen said. "I was hitting fallaway jumpers in warmups, and I thought, 'Hmm.' Then I hit my first jump shot [in the game], and I was like, 'Wow.' And then when I hit the second and third, I said, 'OK, I'm going to keep shooting.' "

He never stopped until UW had improved to 21-5 overall and 10-5 in Pac-10 games and alone in third place behind UCLA and California, which are each 11-4. Washington had been tied with Stanford for third. But the Cardinal has now lost three of its last four conference games and is in danger of falling out of the NCAA-tournament hunt with a 13-11 overall record.

Jensen hit his first three three-pointers while Stanford played a zone defense in the opening minutes.

The Cardinal switched to a man-to-man defense shortly after Jensen's early hot streak.

But by then, the tone had been set and Jensen kept firing, with the rest of the Huskies eventually following suit. Washington made 10 of 18 three-pointers (55 percent), its second-best percentage of the season.

Jensen made 6 of 8 three-pointers, one shy of the school record held by Senque Carey and Deon Luton.

"He's the kind of guy that when he hits his first couple, he doesn't think he's going to miss ever for the rest of his life," UW coach Lorenzo Romar said of Jensen, adding that it "was probably his best game here."

"It wasn't necessarily the plan" to shoot three-pointers, said Jensen, whose previous career high of 17 also came against Stanford here a year ago. "But if something is going good for you, you stick with it."

It was the fifth straight win for the Huskies, all coming after Jensen — who missed the first nine games of the season while recovering from shoulder surgery — was inserted into the starting lineup in place of Jamaal Williams. The move followed a three-game losing streak and, at the time, Romar said he hoped Jensen's three-point shooting would open up opposing team defenses.

But Jensen had made a minimal scoring impact before hitting 3 of 5 three-pointers last Saturday at Oregon State — he had a season-high nine points against the Beavers. In that game, the Huskies sank a season-high 12 of 24 three-pointers, marksmanship they evidently brought with them back to Seattle.

Still, Stanford was apparently unconvinced, opening the game Thursday in a zone defense that simply invited the Huskies to shoot from the perimeter.

Stanford coach Trent Johnson said he went with the 2-3 zone to keep the Huskies out of the paint and "to try to get them into a situation where they have to adjust and think sometimes as opposed to react."

That strategy has worked at times this year as the Huskies entered the game seventh in the Pac-10 in three-point percentage. But it was a miserable failure Thursday night thanks mostly to Jensen.

"He was a madman," marveled teammate Brandon Roy. "He didn't eat anything different, do anything different. He just came out ready to play."

So did Roy, whose game-high 23 points, team-high seven assists and six rebounds once again seemed somewhat overshadowed.

Roy scored 20 or more points for the eighth straight game and also played fabulous defense on Stanford guard Chris Hernandez, who was 2 of 13 from the field with nine points.

Hernandez had hit three free throws with 0.2 seconds left in Palo Alto on Jan. 30 to force overtime in a game the Cardinal won 76-67. That was the second of UW's three consecutive losses, which had the Huskies briefly weighing their NIT options.

But the win over the Cardinal might have all but wrapped up an NCAA tournament bid, and Romar said the Huskies are playing as well as they have all season.

"I would say we are in a pretty good rhythm right now," Romar said.

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com