Until Saturday, there were two Pac-10 teams still hunting for their first conference road win: Stanford and the University of Washington. But that number dwindled to one when the Huskies found that elusive victory on none other than the Cardinal’s home turf, beating Stanford 78-61.

Stanford (11-14, 5-8 Pac-10) opened up an early lead, making it 8-2 by the 17:40 mark. Sophomore guard Jeremy Green had five of these first eight, but both his personal and the team’s success proved fleeting: Green did not score again in the half, and the Cardinal’s lead evaporated as the Huskies (17-8, 7-6) pulled even within two minutes.

Head coach Johnny Dawkins noted that the collapse of early play set a trend for the rest of the game.

“We got off to an absolutely bad start,” said Dawkins. “And our free throw shooting [11 for 24] was pretty bad tonight. That stuff becomes contagious. One guy misses, then the next guy misses a couple–and leads are being built while that’s happening.”

But Green was not the only guy missing. Senior Landry Fields didn’t have a field goal in the first 14 minutes of play, and by the half, not a single Stanford player had reached double digits. (Despite his cold streak, Fields still led Stanford with eight points.

Difficulty at the line was also apparent from early on, as Stanford missed its first six free throws and went on to shoot six-for-14 from the stripe in the first half, as compared to U-Dub’s 13 of 17. Moreover, Stanford only snagged four offensive boards in the first period and was subsequently outscored 11-0 on second-chance opportunities.

The comedy of errors led to a 43-32 deficit at intermission, but Dawkins’ halftime speech wasn’t quite enough to lift the Card, as it did against Washington State on Thursday, when its second-half rally earned a just-in-time 60-58 win. Instead, Stanford pulled within two points twice during the second half, until another cold streak swept the team and put the proverbial nail in the coffin.

Immediately after the break, Stanford missed eight of its first 10 scoring opportunities, including three from long range and three layups.

Dawkins said he was especially disappointed with missed layups and putbacks, as they can carry a team even when other shots aren’t falling.

“We’ve got to do a better job of finishing around the basket,” he said. “We had some opportunities…and those are things you’ve got to convert. To win, you have to make plays like that.”

“We gave up too many second-chance points in the first half,” Dawkins continued. “But mainly we didn’t make our free throws and we had a couple missed finishes. That’s the bottom line: I think it would’ve been very close if we made those plays.”

Fields and Green both finished with 17, and sophomore Jack Trotter put up another 10, but they were outshone by the four Washington players in double digits: forwards Justin Holiday (10), Matt Bryan-Amaning (11) and Quincy Pondexter (18) went to work inside to help the Huskies finish with 26 points in the paint and 17 second-chance points. Five-foot-eight guard Isaiah Thomas led all scorers with 20, and the Huskies’ bench also offered another 17.

“Give Washington credit,” Dawkins said. “They came in, they played their game–they were aggressive defensively, they were attacking offensively, and that’s what they do. I think it’s something that wore us down during the 40-minute game, the sheer depth that they have.”

The aggressive defense by UW kept the Card especially silent from behind the arc, as Stanford went four-for-18 on threes, and Green alone went one-for-nine.

“They did a good job of pushing up on him–they tried to speed him up, and he has to learn [as he develops] that you don’t settle in those situations,” Dawkins said of Green. “We need his bravado, his wanting to do things on his own out there, because that can be contagious for us, too.”

Despite less-than-stellar numbers for the Cardinal, the Huskies, too, were far from perfect. Washington grew quiet at the 17-minute mark in the second half, allowing a 9-1 run from Stanford to shrink UW’s lead to two at 50-48. A dunk by Bryan-Amaning reignited Washington’s offense, but the game stayed close for the next four minutes.

At 9:05, Fields had back-to-back chances to tie the game at 54, but the senior missed both layups, and the Cardinal then watched the Huskies jet to an 8-1 run of their own to take definitive control of the game.

When asked about the sequence, the disappointed forward said simply, “I just missed them.”

A questionable timeout called by Pondexter as he slid across the floor riled the crowd up one last time in the final minutes, wanting Pondexter instead called for traveling. Though even Washington’s coach Lorenzo Romar admitted, “If you’re a Stanford fan, it was [a travel],” the distant lead by Washington had already put the game out of reach.

For Fields, the 17-point difference at home made the game no more or less frustrating than the close losses on the road that have plagued the Cardinal recently.

“Every loss is frustrating,” he said. “You want to win everything.”