Mike Hopkins decided not to show his Washington players any video from their ugly loss at California that began a tough Bay Area trip. No need — everybody knew.
“Sometimes you’ve just got to survive and advance, forget it and have a short-term memory,” Hopkins said, “crumble the paper and throw it away and it never happened.”
The Huskies responded.
Jaylen Nowell scored 13 points but missed the front end of a 1-and-1 during a nervous finish for No. 25 Washington, which still held off Stanford 62-61 on Sunday for a weekend road split.
Stanford star KZ Okpala missed an off-balance 3-pointer at the buzzer and the Huskies secured the loose ball.
Noah Dickerson added 12 points for the Huskies (23-6, 14-2 Pac-12), who lost 76-73 at California on Thursday night as the Golden Bears earned their first conference win.
“The reality of it is, it’s not the end of the world,” Hopkins said.
Josh Sharma scored 16 for Stanford on a day when leading scorer Okpala was limited to six points with more than two dozen scouts in attendance. The Cardinal committed a pair of turnovers in the final 2:37 after the teams had traded baskets down the stretch.
Oscar da Silva added 15 for the Cardinal (15-14, 8-9), who had won the last four meetings at home in the series and three of four overall.
“We didn’t lose the game in the last possession we had there,” da Silva said. “Too many turnovers, I would say.”
Marcus Sheffield hit a tying 3 with 5:09 to play to make it 54-all, and then Matisse Thybulle answered for Washington moments later before Sheffield made another jumper at 3:27.
Cormac Ryan hit a go-ahead 3 with 12:14 left to put Stanford ahead 41-40 and finished with 13 points. He made three 3s, but the Cardinal shot 6 of 17 from deep.
Washington had won 15 of 16 games before the loss in Berkeley but still wound up the outright Pac-12 regular-season champion when both Oregon State and Arizona State lost. The Huskies delayed their celebration until Saturday night.
Washington’s David Crisp scored seven points on 2-of-8 shooting after a career-high 32 points at Cal, his second career 30-point performance, in which he matched his career best with five 3s.
Okpala picked up two quick fouls in the opening 10 minutes with a charge.
The Cardinal missed their first eight 3-point attempts before Sheffield connected with 16:20 left in the game.
Both teams went cold late in the first half — each team going 1 for 10 during a spurt — and the Cardinal didn’t score over the final 5:15 of the first half in a game that attracted some 30 NBA scouts to see the 6-foot-9 sophomore Okpala and Washington’s Thybulle and Nowell.
“The team that played on Thursday wasn’t us,” Thybulle said. “There was no point in lingering or picking apart because that was nothing like what we try to do as a team or as individuals.”
Washington, which missed its initial five field-goal tries, led 29-23 at the break.
Sharma received a flagrant foul with 6:27 left in the first half. Dickerson made a pair of free throws and then was hit with a technical at 6:21.
