Washington was humming right along in its last home game of the non-conference season against Stony Brook on Sunday. The Huskies had never trailed, and carried an 11-point lead into the under-8 timeout. Heck, at one point in the second half Lorenzo Romar's group was up by 16.
The Seawolves didn't quit though. They went on a remarkable 20-4 run in the final 7:02 to hand Washington its first loss of the season 62-57. Kameron Mitchell knocked down three huge 3-pointers in a three minute span to bring the Seawolves close, then a Jameel Warney bucket gave the Seawolves their first lead of the game with 32 seconds left. Stony Brook never looked back as the Huskies struggled to initiate any sort of credible offensive threat late in the contest.
Now, this loss isn't actually the disaster that one thinks about when they hear "Stony Brook beat undefeated Washington." The Seawolves are the clear favorite in the America East Conference. Jameel Warney and Carson Puriefoy are two pretty solid pieces that will be there for this season's run as well as next year's. Plus, coming into the game, Stony Brook was already 129th in KenPom, so they could even move into the top-100 with this win. All of this is to say that the Seawolves are a legit team that might be in the NCAA Tournament when March rolls around.
But still, it's a loss that basically came out of nowhere. The Huskies had been rolling through their non-conference slate without a blemish, and it's not like it was full of cupcakes. Washington already has solid wins over Oklahoma, San Diego State and a solid UTEP team that pushed Arizona to the brink earlier this month. Also, this had been a team that prided itself on defense. Robert Upshaw has been a dominant defensive presence inside, leading the Huskies to a top-five mark in the country against 2-point field-goals. A team like Stony Brook scoring 20 points in seven minutes seemed inconceivable coming into this one.
However, that's what happened, and Romar will have to go back to the drawing board in order to get his team prepped for Pac-12 play. The Huskies open with the northern California portion of league play, as they'll travel to California and Stanford for tough road games. We'll get a sense here rather quickly if the Huskies are for real, or if their start to the season was something of an anomaly.
Also, their loss leaves just six teams in the country unbeaten: Kentucky, Virginia, Duke, TCU, Villanova and Colorado State. No one is safe in college basketball this season, even it's a team that hasn't lost yet.
