Austin Maurer scored 19 points, making a tiebreaking layup with 1:02 remaining and two free throws with 19 seconds left, as Seattle University defeated Washington 70-66 on Friday in the Battle for Seattle at Climate Pledge Arena.
The Redhawks (10-2) beat the Huskies (7-4) for the second consecutive season after snapping a 19-game losing streak that dated to 1978 last year.
Brayden Maldonado added 14 points and Junseok Yeo added 12 for the Redhawks, who rallied from a nine-point second-half deficit.
Desmond Claude led the Huskies with 24 points, Zoom Diallo scored 17 before fouling out and freshman Hannes Steinbach had 15 points and 12 rebounds. Starter Wesley Yates III sustained a hand injury in the first half and didn’t return, finishing with four points.
The Huskies built a 40-31 lead early in the second half.
The Redhawks cut the margin to two before Steinbach made a 3-pointer, Washington’s first of the game after nine straight misses, to put the Huskies up 45-40 with 12:19 remaining.
Seattle tied it on a Maurer layup and took a 48-46 lead on Yeo’s backdoor dunk off a bounce pass from Maleek Arington with 8:38 left.
Arington made four free throws in the final minute to help clinch the victory.
The Redhawks won despite shooting just 39% from the field (23 of 59), including 3 of 22 (13.6%) from 3-point range. That’s because the Huskies were worse at 36.9% (24 of 65), making just 1 of 15 (6.7%) from long distance.
The Huskies led 29-26 after a cold-shooting first half by both teams.
Washington took an early 14-8 lead as Claude, Franck Kepnang and Yates each made two field goals. The Redhawks responded with an 8-0 run, on five straight points by Houran Dan and a step back 3-pointer by Maldonado, while holding the Huskies scoreless for 5:20.
Neither team led by more than three points the rest of the half.
Steinbach, who missed his first five field-goal attempts while committing three turnovers, made a pair of driving layups in the final 2:35 of the half to give the Huskies a 27-26 lead. Diallo added a layup with 36 seconds left to cap the scoring before the intermission.
Maldonado lost his right shoe on a drive to the basket in the opening minute of the second half, picked it up and ran to the other end of the court, where he tried to block a shot by Diallo with his shoe in his right hand. He incurred a technical foul for his effort.
