Sunny delight

The Huskies have talked about putting teams away early and have won several close games. Last weekend, the Huskies finally got what they wanted: a blowout victory, 96-72, over the Sun Devils in Tempe.

Winner of 10 of its past 10 "conference games, Washington (15-10 overall, 10-6 Pac-10) needs just one win in its two remaining contests to clinch second place in the Pac-10. This is a huge jump from last season, when the Huskies missed the league tournament, finishing in ninth place.

The biggest improvement lies in travel. The Dawgs ended conference road games with a winning record for the first time since 1986. Last year, the UW was 1-8 on the road, including the hammering it received at Arizona State by 32 points, 89-57.

"It's not an arrogant swagger this team has, but it's a swagger that successful teams have where they don't get rattled a whole lot," Husky coach Lorenzo Romar said. " You can only do that if you expect to win ballgames."

The Huskies never looked back after jumping out to an early 9-0 lead ,keeping Arizona State (10-16, 4-13) at bay the rest of the way.

"Our starters are doing a good job getting us out to big leads," said Husky guard Curtis Allen. "The rest of us on the bench are picking up where they left off."

The formula for success in the first half involved shooting 50 percent while ASU shot poorly at 38 percent. The Huskies kept their composure in a foul-fest, hitting 30 of 36 from the free-throw line. An additional key factor was aggressiveness on the glass: every Washington player in the first period snatched at least one rebound.

"We played some good basketball on both ends of the floor," Romar explained. "It's very exciting for our guys, especially for Curtis Allen. He's going out a winner whatever way you slice it in terms of basketball record."

Allen, the lone senior, had one of his best games this season with nine points, while Brandon Roy led the Huskies with 18 points, and five rebounds and assists.

With 3:51 left in the contest and the Huskies in full control, Nate Robinson threw an alley-oop pass to Roy for a slam, matching Ike Diogu (27 points and eight rebounds), who also threw down a dunk on the previous possession.

Roy's jam from Robinson (13 points) put the icing on the cake as Washington relished its first Arizona-school sweep since 1984.

"We're a hungry bunch right now, we got a little taste of success, now we want more," said Allen. " We realize we are pushing for the NCAA tournament and any let-up right now will kill those dreams and hopes, so we are going to fight in every game left."

Unbeaten Stanford (25-0, 16-0) remains dominant and is ranked number one in the country after beating Oregon 76-55; the Huskies and the Cardinal are the hottest items on the Pac-10 market. When the teams meet Saturday at Bank of America Arena, the game will have already been sold out for more than two weeks.

Roy remained optimistic about the upcoming game with Stanford and the postseason. He expects to get into the Big Dance if the Huskies finish the final homestand unbeaten.

"We want to beat Cal first to secure the second-place spot and get that automatic bid," Roy said. " I think that we have a lot of confident guys in our locker room -- this is not like last year. We control our destiny."