Holiday's defense slows Lobos in Washington's rout

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Before their NCAA tournament second-round game against third-seeded New Mexico, Washington's game plan was simple: Limit Darington Hobson and cut off Lobos three-point shooters.

"It's pick your poison," said coach Lorenzo Romar after the Huskies' 82-64 victory. "We could live with them going inside and scoring, but we wanted to take away something. Now to do that, we needed a big game out of Justin Holiday and he delivered."

Add Hobson to Holiday's long list of victims that includes Stanford's Landry Fields and Washington State's Klay Thompson.

Hobson, the Mountain West Player of the Year, had other worries other than Holiday's in-your-shirt defense. He sprained his left wrist Thursday and appeared bothered by the injury.

"He had some swelling in it," New Mexico coach Steve Alford said. "It's kind of like a sprained ankle. You don't have a fracture in a sprained ankle, but you get swelling and soreness."

Hobson led the Lobos in points, rebounds and assists, but he was a non-factor in the first half when Washington raced out to a 44-32 lead at intermission.

He scored just three points on 1-for-3 shooting in the first half.

"I took it to heart not playing defense well in the last game and just wanted to use my length, make him shoot over me and keep him out of the lane," said Holiday, who had seven rebounds, five points, four assists, three blocks and three steals.

"When he was driving to the basket, my teammates got hands up and knocked the ball away from him."

Hobson finished with 11 points, six which came when the game was decided. He also had nine rebounds and four turnovers.

"I thought he was getting tired a little bit," Holiday said. "We were pushing the ball, and not a lot of teams can play at that pace."

Despite his team's 18-point defeat, Hobson wasn't impressed with the Huskies.

"They played the best game of their life tonight," Hobson said. "They're not even that good. They just played a good game tonight. We weren't ready, and they beat us."

Notes

• New Mexico senior forward Roman Martinez needed four stitches to close a cut above his left eye.

• Every eligible Huskies player made an appearance including sophomore walk-on Brendan Sherrer, who hadn't played since Feb. 20.

• Quincy Pondexter moved ahead of Bob Houbregs (1,774 points) into third place on UW's all-time scoring list. Pondexter has 1,779 points. He's 26 points away from Jon Brockman (1,805). Chris Welp (2,073) leads the list.

• New Mexico had surrendered 82 points in regulation only once this season. The Lobos beat New Mexico State 97-87 in November, but they were unable to keep pace with the Huskies.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.