Originally published Thursday, January 24, 2008 at 12:00 AM

UW Women | Huskies need to quickly find offensive punch

Where does the Washington women's basketball team go from here? The Huskies are 7-12 overall and in eighth place with a 2-5 Pac-10 record...

By Terry Wood

Special to The Seattle Times

Today

Arizona State @ UW, 7 p.m.

Where does the Washington women's basketball team go from here?

The Huskies are 7-12 overall and in eighth place with a 2-5 Pac-10 record. In the short term, they'll host third-place Arizona State (11-7, 5-2) tonight at 7 at Edmundson Pavilion.

But what's the longer-term view for a Washington team that has dropped eight of its past 11 games? The Huskies twice last weekend allowed decent leads (12 points and nine points) to slip away before absorbing narrow losses at Oregon State and Oregon.

"We want to start identifying ourselves now," said first-year coach Tia Jackson. "We've kind of made people understand that defensively, we're going to come at you. The other part of that is, where do we get our offensive power?"

Good question. Washington ranks eighth among Pac-10 teams in scoring (63.6 points), ninth in field-goal percentage (38.8 percent) and ninth in three-point percentage (27.4 percent).

Points won't come easily tonight. The Sun Devils yield just 59.9 per game, the third-lowest total in the Pac-10. Plus, on Wednesday Jackson indicated 6-foot-5 freshman Jess McCormack will likely miss her third consecutive game after suffering a concussion Jan. 13.

McCormack averages 8.6 points and 4.6 rebounds and has been UW's most dependable interior scorer.

"We have 12 games left," Jackson said, including what at this point would be a play-in game into the final eight of the Pac-10 tournament. "What are teams going to say about us 12 games from now?"

Notes

• McCormack missed three games earlier this season because of an ankle injury and one because of illness.

• ASU's Briann January (12.2 ppg), a junior, played at Spokane's Lewis & Clark High School. Senior guard Reagan Pariseau (3.8 ppg) played at Central Valley. Junior center Kirsten Thompson (5.1 ppg) is a Monroe grad. Freshman guard Stephanie Wilber (Auburn Riverside) has averaged 0.6 points in seven games. Coach Charli Turner Thorne began her coaching career as a graduate assistant at UW and actively recruits in the state.

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