Cal's in 1st, Washington's in revival

Isaiah Thomas sure doesn't sound like he plays on the last-place team in the Pac-10 conference.

"Cal is picked to win the Pac-10 championship. But it does come through us," the sophomore guard for the Huskies said before Saturday's game against first-place California (11-5, 3-1 Pac-10) in Seattle. "We own the Pac-10 championship."

Captain Quincy Pondexter backed up his teammate Friday.

"You can't dethrone someone until you win that title," Washington's only senior said. "We are the defending Pac-10 champions. I know we haven't played like it, but recently we've been changing that around."

As of Thursday, actually.

Washington (11-5, 2-3) lost consecutive league games by double-digit margins to Oregon, Arizona State and Arizona before it put defensive force Justin Holiday into the starting lineup for the first time in the junior's career.

He led a 33-point demolition of Stanford on Thursday night, providing tenacity Washington had lacked for weeks.

"It was kind of a new beginning," said Pondexter, who had 27 points and 10 rebounds against the Cardinal.

Saturday's matchup between the top two scoring teams in the Pac-10 is the game the Huskies had circled before the season. The Bears are expected to be the biggest threat to Washington repeating as conference champions. The team of veteran shooters led by seniors Patrick Christopher, Jerome Randle and Theo Robertson has beaten the Huskies three consecutive times.

But now that Washington has gotten off to a rocky start in league play, all Huskies games have circles around them.

"In the beginning of the season, we looked forward to playing this game," said Pondexter, who is fourth in the conference averaging 20 points per game - just behind Randle's 20.4. "But as this season has gone on, we've really got to take it one step at a time. ... We've got to be ready. We will be ready."

Holiday, who is 6-foot-6, hounded Landry Fields, Stanford's leading scorer, into missing seven of 12 shots Thursday. He also brought energy the Huskies had lacked since before Christmas, when they were the conference's only ranked team. He will likely defend Cal's Christopher or Robertson, or both.

Holiday called the start a "dream come true."

"We had to come out and make a statement," Holiday said, "otherwise, we stay down in the standings, at the bottom of the Pac-10."

That's the thing about the season so far in this beaten-down conference. A couple of wins can send a team from last to first. And vice versa.

Cal's 93-88 win Thursday at Washington State, when Randle scored a career-high 39 points while making seven of 12 3-point shots and playing all 40 minutes, put the Bears alone in first place. It also sent the Cougars (12-5, 2-3) from tied for second to tied with Washington and Arizona for last.

Cal was up 28-8 after 8 minutes, and Randle said his team hadn't attacked an opponent so fiercely in his four collegiate seasons. That signaled the Bears are awakening after a string of injuries and high-profile blowout losses early in the season to Syracuse and Kansas.

"A huge road win, especially for this conference," Cal coach Mike Montgomery said. "We would hate to head to Seattle with a loss."

Saturday's game could turn into small ball.

Holiday's emergence into the lineup over inconsistent Matthew Bryan-Amaning has made Washington smaller yet quicker, with foul-prone, 6-7 sophomore Tyreese Breshers the tallest Huskies starter.

Cal went small at Washington State. Junior center Markhuri Sanders-Frison, who averages 17 minutes a game, has been out all week with back spasms. Montgomery isn't sure if he will play at Washington. Plus, Bak Bak, a 6-9 freshman, was out with eligibility issues.

Big or small, Washington thinks it's found its key to revival and survival: more intensity.

"We've got to understand," Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar said, "that we don't have a lot of margin for error when it comes to effort."