UW Women's Hoops | Sami Whitcomb makes late three-pointer to lead Huskies past BYU, 67-66

Washington has a different feel.

And all it took was a flick of the wrist from Sami Whitcomb to bring it to Edmundson Pavilion.

Whitcomb, a senior forward, scored all 12 of Washington's points in the final 2:19 of the second half to give her Huskies a 67-66 home-opening victory against Brigham Young on Wednesday. In the season opener on Saturday at Portland State, Washington was on the losing side of that same score.

The most impressive of Whitcomb's salvos was a rare three-pointer with 4.1 seconds remaining. She froze and let her wrist hang as the shot slipped through the hoop to give her team a one-point lead. Teammate Sarah Morton snapped her out of the daze, pushing Whitcomb to play defense.

"This is great when you feel like you've been on the opposite end so many times, especially with the last game," said Whitcomb, whose team lost on a jumper with 0.3 seconds left against the Vikings. "It wasn't going to happen this time. This time we were kind of on the opposite end coming back. But it was never a defeatist attitude.

"It was great to see it executed like it was, so I was proud of our team."

After the heartbreaker in Portland, the Huskies reconvened at practice, promising to display a different team than last weekend. Or even last year, when UW was last in the Pac-10 conference and a disappointing 8-22 overall.

Down 66-64 with 19 seconds remaining, during a timeout the Dawgs huddled around and yelled "Redemption" before taking the court with a play originally designed to get the ball inside. Only when Whitcomb looked for sophomore center Regina Rogers (11 points), she saw her own opponent playing defense with hands down, cueing Whitcomb to take the long shot.

"For me, it felt like the surest thing at that point," said Whitcomb, who finished with a game-high 25 points on 8-for-13 shooting. "But I was afraid it was going to be short because I was pretty tired. I held it so it wasn't short. I didn't mean to hold it that long, mind you."

Enter Morton.

"She was just following through and I'm like, 'Sami! There's four seconds left, we have to play defense!' " said the junior, who had a career-high 12 points and five assists. "I was so excited, but we stayed focused and played that last four seconds of defense. Then after that we got pretty excited."

After Cougars junior guard Jazmine Foreman missed her attempt as the final buzzer sounded, Whitcomb raced into the arms of teammate Mackenzie Argens and was swarmed by the rest of the Huskies. Her three-pointer capped a 17-7 run to end the game.

Washington (1-1) overcame a 10-point first-half deficit, confused mostly by BYU's full-court press.

The Cougars (1-1) shot 10 of 18 from three-point range and got the Huskies' post rotation into foul trouble — with all four accumulating four fouls apiece, hampering UW's play. Just not the win.

"It's relief," Morton said. "And I felt like we deserved it because we played so hard against Portland State and got robbed. This was redemption and it felt amazing."

Note

• Sophomore guard Kristi Kingma played 26 minutes, missing the opener because of dizziness. She suffered from kidney stones last week and did not practice. Hospitalized twice, Kingma believes the medication led to the lightheaded feeling on Saturday. She was 0 for 5 from the field and had two steals.

Box score

BYU
min		fgm-a	ftm-a	or-t	a	pf	pts
Moeaki	26	3-3	4-8	1-2	1	3	11
Riley	17	2-3	2-2	0-3	1	3	6
Foreman	22	0-2	1-2	0-2	1	4	1
Nielson	36	4-8	0-0	2-4	3	4	10
Hall	35	4-11	2-4	0-5	4	3	14
Jackson	3	1-1	0-1	0-0	0	0	3
Parker	17	2-3	0-0	1-1	0	2	5
Kaufusi	11	2-3	1-1	2-3	1	3	5
Wood	25	3-7	4-8	1-5	1	3	11
Peterson	8	0-1	0-0	0-1	0	1	0
	200	21-42	14-26	8-32	12	26	66

Percentages: FG .500, FT .538. Three-point goals: 10-18, (Moeaki 1-1, Foreman 0-1, Nielson 2-3, Hall 4-8, Jackson 1-1, Parker 1-1, Wood 1-3). Team rebounds: 6. Blocked shots: 0. Turnovers: 31, (Moeaki 4, Riley 7, Foreman 4, Nielson 6, Hall 4, Parker 2, Kaufusi, Wood 2). Steals: 9, (Riley, Foreman, Nielson 3, Hall 4).

WASHINGTON
min		fgm-a	ftm-a	or-t	a	pf	pts
McLellan	18	3-6	0-0	1-1	1	4	6
Argens	17	2-6	0-0	1-5	0	4	4
Morton	32	4-8	4-6	0-2	5	0	12
Whitcomb	31	8-13	7-8	1-2	1	2	25
Mosiman	28	1-8	2-2	6-6	4	1	4
Kingma	26	0-5	0-0	1-2	0	2	0
Lay	10	0-3	5-6	0-2	0	4	5
Rozier	8	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Williams	8	0-2	0-0	0-2	1	1	0
Rogers	22	5-7	1-5	2-3	0	4	11
	200	23-58	19-27	14-30	12	22	67

Percentages: FG .397, FT .704. Three-point goals: 2-6, (Morton 0-1, Whitcomb 2-3, Kingma 0-1, Lay 0-1). Team rebounds: 5. Blocked shots: 4, (Argens 3, Whitcomb). Turnovers: 22, (McLellan, Argens 3, Morton 3, Mosiman 6, Kingma, Lay 4, Rozier 2, Rogers). Steals: 12, (McLellan, Argens, Morton, Whitcomb, Mosiman 2, Kingma 2, Lay 2, Rozier, Williams).

BYU	34	32	—	66
Washington	30	37	—	67

Attendance: 1,773. Officials: Lisa Jones, Bret Gervasoni, Connie Pardue. Technical fouls: BYU-None. Washington-Lay, Liz; McLellan, Laura.