Huskies look to stop Lopez in Bay Area

Any time you lose a game to a team you have to play twice, an adjustment is needed to come out victorious the second time around.

For Washington to top Stanford tonight, the Huskies are going to have to make some monster adjustments from the first meeting with Stanford that saw the Cardinal dominate in a 65-51 victory at Hec Edmunson Pavilion.

And the Huskies won’t have to look far to figure out what they need to do. Stanford center Brook Lopez torched the Dawgs for 31 points during the last game, scoring with relative ease from the low block.

“Hopefully we can do a better job on Lopez,” UW coach Lorenzo Romar said. “He’s a tough one to deal with, no doubt. I thought he scored too easily on us last time. We need to do a better job there for starters.”

As flat as Washington has looked at times this season, that probably didn’t have much to do with its loss to Stanford the first time around. UW was dominated from the start, and had no answer for the Lopez twins on either end of the floor.

“That night, he was pretty good,” Romar said. “I don’t know if we were as sound as we needed to be against him that night. We allowed him to get pretty comfortable out there.”

The Huskies have proven somewhat adept at stopping big-time, big man this season. Jon Brockman and Artem Wallace banged and bruised Kevin Love into a frustrating afternoon in Seattle earlier this month, a formula that is going to have to be executed once more to stop Lopez.

“They came out and spanked us the first time,” Brockman said. “We’ve got to come out and be on our A-game. We’ve got to try to out-scrap them and just have a lot more energy than them.”

“We just didn’t play good against [Brook Lopez] last time. We let him catch the ball too deep, we let him get going and get some easy buckets,” Wallace said. “We’ve got to be more physical against him, push him off the block, and just limit his touches as well.”

And they’ll have to do it in an arena that has housed what Romar called two of the more painful losses of his coaching career.

Last season the Huskies blew a lead inside the final minute, eventually losing in a game that could have been enough to get them into the NCAA tournament.

Two seasons ago, Washington led the Cardinal by three as the final seconds ticked off the clock. But Justin Dentmon fouled Chris Hernandez as he was shooting a three-pointer. Hernandez drained all three free throws and Stanford went on to win in overtime. The loss cost UW a share of the regular season conference title.

“Those two games may have been the two most difficult losses since we’ve been here,” Romar said.

Washington finishes its trip to the Bay Area with a game against California on Saturday in what could be its best chance at another victory for the regular season. A win in any of the Huskies’ final three games would assure a season finish no worse than .500.

[Reach reporter Christian Caple at sports@thedaily.washington.edu.]