Washington tops Northwestern with balanced scoring, defense

Freshman forward Hannes Steinbach scored 22 points and grabbed 14 rebounds for his Big Ten Conference-leading 14th double-double of the season as Washington defeated Northwestern 76-62 on Saturday in Evanston, Ill.

Zoom Diallo added 22 points, six rebounds and six assists. Wesley Yates III scored 21 points, making 5 of 8 3-point attempts, for the Huskies (12-10, 4-7 Big Ten). Senior center Franck Kepnang scored just two points but grabbed nine boards and tied a career high with six blocked shots.

Yates also helped limit the Wildcats' Nick Martinelli, the conference's leading scorer (24.0 ppg), to 19 points. It snapped a streak of 12 straight 20-point games for the senior forward, who scored 34 in a 94-73 home blowout of Penn State on Thursday.

Arrinten Page scored 16 points for Northwestern (10-12, 2-9), Jayden Reid added 11 and Tre Singleton tallied 10.

The Huskies shot 46.2% from the field (30 of 65) and made 10 of 22 from 3-point range, while limiting Northwestern to 38.6% (22 of 57) and 5 of 19 from distance. Washington held a 45-31 rebounding advantage.

The Huskies took their largest lead of the game, 48-27, on a 3-pointer by Steinbach with 16:38 remaining.

The Wildcats used a pair of 7-0 runs to pull within 53-45 with 9:27 to go but never got any closer.

The normally slow-starting Huskies bolted to a 39-27 halftime lead as Yates scored 15.

Two tip-ins by Steinbach and another by Kepnang gave Washington an 8-4 advantage.

The teams traded the lead until Ziallo's tip-in with 8:11 left gave the Huskies a 19-18 edge.

Back-to-back 3-pointers by Diallo and Yates increased the lead to 27-20.

Yates scored all of the points in an 8-0 run late in the half -- making two free throws and then a pair of 3-pointers -- to put the Huskies up 39-25.