The Huskies finally fell back to earth with a painful loss to the Arizona Wildcats, 106-97, in Tucson on Thursday night. After an impressive run of 6 wins in 7 Pac-10 contests—with the sole loss a triple overtime thriller against Cal—the Huskies conceded a road loss to one of the historically best teams in the country.

Arizona down but still dangerous

Though struggling through an off year—even with the win, UA is now tied for second to last in the conference—the Wildcats proved they are never an assumed win, especially at the raucous McKale Center. With the loss, the Huskies fell back to the rest of the Pac-10; currently half of the 10 teams are within a game of the conference lead, with UW and UCLA both having two conference losses and Cal, USC, and ASU with three each. The Huskies currently hold the tiebreaker against UCLA with their win from last Saturday, but with more than half the schedule left to play, not including the conference tournament, the Huskies missed a chance to pad their lead with a victory against one of the teams not expected to be there at the end.

Wildcats flip Husky script

Ironically, the Huskies lost in precisely the same way that they've been pulling out victories recently: the Wildcats used a huge second half and a wildly lopsided free-throw shooting advantage to take the Dawgs down. Against then-#11 UCLA last Saturday, the Huskies outscored the Bruins by 12 in the second half, and made 26 more free throws while shooting a whopping 84% from the line. Two night earlier against USC, they shot 80% from the line and made 19 more free throws than the Trojans and, discounting a late, meaningless USC rally, outscored the Trojans by double digits in the second half. And the week previous, on the road against the Oregon schools, they collectively outscored the Ducks and Beavers by 33 in the second half and turned close contests into routs.

Contrast these stats with the loss to Arizona: the Wildcats turned a one-point halftime deficit into a double digit lead with a 13-0 run right out of the gate, and outscored the Dawgs by a whopping 41-13 margin from the free throw stripe. Not only that, but the Huskies reverted to their poor free throw shooting, making only 65% of their shots from the line.

Huskies take step back in several departments

Free throw shooting was not the only area that saw the Huskies falter and return to previous Achilles' Heels after such a strong run. They gave up 69 second half points, by far their worst defensive outing of the season, and besides the poor free throw shooting percentage, perhaps more troubling is the lack of trips to the line. Isaiah Thomas and Justin Dentmon each took only one trip to the stripe, shooting two free throws each in over 30 minutes of respective game time. Compare this to their three point shooting, and the problem is obvious: Of Dentmon's 14 shots on Thursday night, 12 were from beyond the arc; and I.T. missed all 7 of his three-pointers. Dentmon at least shot a great percentage, hitting 7 of 12; the fact is, however, when those two fall in love with three-pointers, the Huskies suffer. They are at their best when taking the ball to the hole, making layups and freethrows, or kicking out to the other for the occasional killer three-ball.

Huskies must become road warriors

Also interesting to note is how differently this team plays on the road versus at home in this regard. Both the wins against the Los Angeles schools came in Seattle, and the Huskies used the crowd to propel them to second half runs that put the teams away. Further, they are shooting about 30 free throws more per game at home than they are on the road. This is in part attributable to poor Pac-10 officiating, which lets home crowds sway them into making unequal calls; but the lion's share must fall at the feet of the Huskies. Though young as a team, the Huskies need seniors Dentmon and John Brockman to step up their leadership and guide them to some big road wins, or else they won't remain near the top of the standings.

Tough road trip continues

Unfortunately for the Huskies, they don't have the same luxury they did following their previous conference loss: a road trip to the lowly Oregon schools. Those two blowout wins went a long way towards revitalizing the Huskies after the devastating loss to Cal. This time, however, they must go to Tempe to face the top-20 Sun Devils and their pre-season All-American sophomore guard James Hardin, who leads the Pac-10 in scoring at 22 points per game to go with almost 6 boards, 4 assists, and 2 steals a contest. Both the Sun Devils and Huskies can be accused of looking past Thursday's rival in preparation for their big showdown in the desert on Saturday, as ASU also got outplayed in the second half and lost to Washington State. The Devils on the road will arguably be the biggest challenge of the year so far for the Huskies.

Following that game it doesn't get any easier for the Huskies next week, as they have to travel to the Bay Area to play Stanford—who they beat by a point on a last second Brockman tip in Seattle—and Cal. This four game road trip is a make or break one for the Dawgs, which makes losing to one of the last place teams in the conference to kick off the trip so much more damaging.