UW Men | Cardinal hand Huskies worst home loss since 2003

It had been a while since Washington fans had seen this, and many of them decided they'd really rather not. They began the trek for the exits with eight minutes left here Thursday night, in a trickle that quickly turned to a stream.

Washington's hopes of beating Stanford had long since departed, however, and by the end, only the diehards were left to witness the Huskies' 65-51 defeat to the Stanford Cardinal at Edmundson Pavilion.

The game wasn't in doubt after the opening five minutes.

"I can't remember the last time someone beat us this way at home," said UW coach Lorenzo Romar.

For the record, it was Dec. 3, 2003 — an 86-62 wipeout at the hands of Gonzaga about a month before Brandon Roy and Nate Robinson led the Huskies back to prominence.

The blowout had fans leaving early, and some of the UW players weren't sure they'd had any reason to come at all.

"A really dull effort," said UW forward Quincy Pondexter, who led the Huskies with 15 points. "We were just really lacking energy; there was no excitement from our team. I felt sorry for the fans who had to watch that."

At least they saw a career game from Stanford's Brook Lopez, a 7-foot sophomore center whose stamp on this one was total.

He scored a career-high 31 points and hit 11 of 17 from the field. He also had 13 rebounds, three blocked shots and three assists.

"Brook was unstoppable," Romar said. "He impacted the game maybe as much as any player since we have been here."

Two of those blocks came in the first four minutes as he combined with twin brother Robin Lopez to set an early tone of dominance.

Seemingly unnerved by Stanford's show of force inside, the Huskies could never get anything going offensively and shot just 15 of 52 for the game — 28.8 percent (their lowest of the season). They hit 7 of 29 in the second half (24.1 percent).

"Their size bothered us, obviously," Romar said.

The twins combined for three early blocks to key a stretch of more than seven minutes without a field goal for the Huskies, ending all suspense.

The Lopez twins were "monsters," said UW forward Jon Brockman, whose 14th double-double of the season (13 points, 13 rebounds) was one of Washington's few highlights.

"Offensively, we just didn't have that flow we were starting to have," he said.

It was 33-22 at halftime and UW never made a game of it in the second half, falling behind by 21 before making a minor run to get as close as 12, about the only life the Huskies showed all night.

Brockman, who was bothered by a slight groin injury, lamented that the Huskies hadn't seemed like their normal selves before the game, something Romar noticed as well.

"I don't know what it was," Romar said. "I would have liked to have seen us play with a little more passion tonight with so much at stake."

Romar did what he could, going with a man defense early then switching to a zone as Brook Lopez — the better of the twins, offensively — began to get rolling.

But the Huskies, who had won five in a row against Stanford in Seattle, never found an answer as Lopez scored early, often and easily, rarely having to venture more than a foot or so from the hoop.

"I think that was his best game for a full 40 minutes," said teammate Mitch Johnson, a junior point guard from O'Dea who had eight points and six assists.

The game was the first of four in a row at home for the Huskies against the four Pac-10 California schools, and the feeling around the program is that UW needs to win three of them to have a realistic chance to stay in the hunt for an NCAA tournament berth.

Instead, UW fell to 12-9 overall and 3-5 in Pac-10 play and now hosts a Cal team fresh off an upset win of Washington State in Pullman.

"We've got to change a lot of things," Brockman said. "If we come out like that, we're not going to win a single game the rest of the Pac-10."

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