Huskies took contol after about 10 minutes and held the rest of the way. Their reward is keeping their share of the Pac-10 lead — along with UCLA — at the race’s halfway point.

Coach Lorenzo Romar was happy with the play of Dentmon and Thomas, of course, but he really stressed the defensive contributions of Darnell Gant on James Harden and the defense and rebounding of Justin Holiday.

Here’s my game story, here’s one from the Arizona Republic, and here are some highlights:

Star of the game: UW senior guard Justin Dentmon scored a

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Washington coach Steve Sarkisian’s two recruiting violations over the last two weeks — each outlined in blog posts below — clearly are not good first impressions, either in reality or perception. However, Pac-10 associate commissioner for compliance Mike Matthews has put them in some perspective.

"Secondary violations are very common," Matthews said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press."… Generally speaking, secondary violations result in a revisiting of the rules and a letter of admonishment.”

UW athletic director Scott Woodward said the university self reports 30 or so secondary violations each academic year, usually with five or

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Remember what it was like in Western Washington in the days leading up to the Seahawk’s Super Bowl appearance? That’s kind of what it’s been like in Arizona’s Valley of the Sun this week.

There are T-shirt sales on street corners, signs of support in merchants windows and the Cardinals in the Super Bowl is making all other local news distinctly secondary. Including today’s basketball game between No. 23 Washington and No. 14 Arizoa State. (Here’s my story from today’s paper. And here’s one from the Arizona Republic.)

“Obviously the Cardinals have generated a lot of

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What seemed to be an extra-long practice for the Huskies today actually turned out to be a normal practice that ended late because it started late.

After running his team through an hour and 20 minute practice on the ASU campus today, coach Lornezo Romar said he hopes the results of last night’s loss to Arizona got his team’s attention by itself.

“Sometimes it’s not a harder workout, sometimes it’s film, sometimes its talking to,” he said. “We learned a valuable lesson last night. We said from the first day of practice, we’re just not good enough to

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Final: It was a classic game of runs, but the Huskies’ final surge never quite caught up with the Wildcats. And afterward, the Huskies blamed lack of effort, especially on the defensive end.

UW falls to 15-5 and 6-2 with a tough one at No. 14 Arizona State on Saturday. Arizona climbs to 13-8 and 3-5.

Here’s my game storty; and some highlights:

Star of the game: Arizona junior guard Nic Wise had a game-high 29 points while also dishing eight assists. He hit all 14 of his free throws and nailed three of seven 3-pointers.

…

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Here’s a release from UW arriving in my inbox today concering the incident outlined in the previous post:

The University of Washington athletic department will self-report a secondary violation of NCAA rules having to do with the football program, athletic director Scott Woodward said today.



The violation occurred when UW head coach Steve Sarkisian and assistant head coach Nick Holt met with two high-school seniors and their coach last week in Los Angeles. Also present at that meeting were a newspaper reporter and a junior teammate of the two players. It is not permissible for coaches

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UW compliance officials are investigating whether new football coach Steve Sarkisian and defensive coordinator Nick Holt — both formerly of USC — violated NCAA rules by allowing a reporter and a high school junior to attend a recruiting meeting that was detailed in a story by Los Angeles Times.

Here’s an update from the L.A. Times.

This comes on the heels of last week’s report (see blog post from Jan. 21) about the prohibited use of a fog machine used in the recruitment of Wilson defensive back Desmond Trufant.

The Huskies are off for their first of four straight road games that will go a long way toward telling how good they really are.

A week ago, I figured three straight splits — the LA schools at home last week, the Arizona trip this week and the Bay trip next week — would be pretty good. But after sweeping the Trojans and Bruins, this team’s upside may have risen a bit.

In any case, this opener in Tucson should be intereting because 2-5 in league says one thing about Arizona, while a lineup including Chase Budinger, Jordan

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