BERKELEY, Calif. — Can anyone stop Terrell Brown Jr.?
That’s the most pressing question for the Washington men’s basketball team, its surprising senior star point guard who ranks among the top scorers in the country and the Huskies’ remaining Pac-12 opponents.
Brown is nearly two-thirds of the way into scripting a storybook season in which he’s nearly single handedly resurrected a UW team that hit rock bottom last season at 5-21.
Remarkably, the Huskies (11-8, 6-3 Pac-12) are competing for a top-four finish in the league with 11 regular-season games left, including Thursday’s 8 p.m. rematch against California (9-13, 2-9) at Haas Pavilion.
“Certainly one of the best stories in our league is what Washington is doing and that starts and ends with Terrell Brown,” Pac-12 analyst Don MacLean said. “It’s not just his scoring. Lots of guys can score. The biggest thing that sticks out is that he’s able to score over 20 a night without shooting threes, which is very unusual in this day and age in any level of basketball.
“Usually the big-time scorers are guys that start by making threes and then they play off of that by getting into the lane. He’s the opposite of that. He starts by getting to the rim or getting into the paint and that sets up him trying to get fouled.”
Brown leads the Pac-12 and ranks sixth nationally among Division I players with a 21.7 scoring average.
What distinguishes the 6-foot-3 and 195-pound guard from his contemporaries is he’s converted just 9 of 33 three-point attempts and is shooting 47.2% inside the arc.
“You can tell he’s got instincts to score,” said MacLean, who set several Pac-12 scoring records, including the league’s all-time scoring mark of 2,608 during a brilliant career at UCLA (1989-92). “So whatever you do, whatever you defense you throw at him or whoever you put on him, he’s got something for that. The guys that really understand and have instincts to score do that.”
MacLean also noted Brown leads the Pac-12 with 135 free throw attempts and has sank 103.
“I haven’t seen a college player in a while that’s trying to get fouled,” MacLean said. “Part of being a complete scorer is being able to shoot it, being able to get to a spot and getting to the foul line. You just don’t see that much anymore. … I’m not sure how you stop him because he seems to have a counter to whatever you throw at him.”
Take, for instance, Washington’s 77-73 double overtime win against Utah on Saturday. At the end of the first half, Brown feinted a drive that rocked Ute defender Both Gach off balance before stepping back for a contested 22-foot three-pointer that splashed through the net as time expired.
It was Brown’s first three in the past four games.
“I knew they were going to play the drive,” Brown said. “I could hear them. I’m a student. I’m a listener, and I’m adjusting with those guys. They were like, ‘Sit on the left and he’s going to go left.’ I kind of baited him into thinking I was going to go downhill and I just stopped. That’s a shot I worked on earlier today before the game actually. It paid off right there.”
After 19 games, the scouting report on Brown says the right-hander favors drives on the left side of the court that results in layups or pull-up jumpers.
And yet, inexplicably, Brown still finds a way to score.
“He watches tape too,” UW coach Mike Hopkins said. “We watch tape too. We know they’re going to defend a certain way. He starts to figure out different ways.
“It’s like you’re sitting there and you’re like how can you let him (do that)? But he finds a way. It’s like the guys say, ‘Listen, he’s going to go left every time.’ But for some reason he still knows how to get to his left hand. And that’s when you know you have a unique talent. You find a way. That’s who he’s been.”
Brown won’t challenge Washington’s single-season scoring record set by legendary Bob Houbregs in 1952-53 when he averaged 25.6 points and tallied 846 points in 33 games.
Still, Brown is making a bid to join a shortlist of UW’s most gifted scorers that includes Markelle Fultz (23.2 points per game, 2016-17), Louie Nelson (23.0 ppg., 1972-73) and Steve Hawes (21.8 ppg., 1970-71 and 21.7 ppg., 1971-72).
It’s a been an uncanny and rapid ascension to stardom for Brown, who began his career at Division II Western Oregon and played at four schools, including Arizona where he averaged just 7.3 points last season.
“He’s been playing like this for the past couple of years prior to his arrival from Arizona,” said UW guard Daejon Davis, Brown’s cousin and former Garfield High teammate. “But seeing him do it on this big of stage, for some people it seems (extraordinary). But he’s been working on his game.”
Davis noted Brown’s scoring prowess at Seattle University (2018-20) where he averaged 17.2 points and Shoreline Community College (2017-18) with 30 points per game.
“In high school, he was known as a facilitator, defender and a glue guy,” Davis said. “But we needed a guy to be our scoring threat and he’s been comfortable with the role because he had to do it at Seattle U and Shoreline. As much of a storybook story it is, it’s kind of expected just from his preparation.”
Hopkins and MacLean struggled when asked who Brown compares to favorably in the NBA.
“A guy who I played with at Syracuse named Sherman Douglas,” Hopkins said. “They called him ‘The General.’ Terrell is a better scorer. But Sherman was built on hard work and grittiness. He just figured out ways to win.
“(Terrell is) kind of a modern day … Kyle Lowry when he was Villanova. Those guys didn’t score like Terrell, but they had that same type of being a little bit undersized and they can go at you and attack. And they play a physical brand of old-school basketball that is so much fun to watch that you can connect with it and have fun with it. It’s like a throwback.”
MacLean initially compared Brown to former NBA player Rod Strickland before settling on San Antonio Spurs great Tony Parker.
“This is probably a good example to use to explain Terrell,” MacLean said. “Tony Parker for a couple years in a row led the (NBA) in points in the paint at 6-2. People think points in the paint and they think post ups and big guys. No, it’s guys that can get into the paint whenever they want.”
Brown has seen a mix of defenses as opponents have tried zones, double teams and bigger defenders to keep him out of the paint.
So far nothing has worked and he has no plans on altering his style even though it seems as if everyone knows where he’s going.
“My teammates find me in spots,” he said after tallying 30 points, four rebounds and four assists in Saturday’s win over Utah. “The coaching staff moves me around in different positions to come off ball screens, on ball screens and double screens. I don’t think I’ll change my game for the opponent. I’ve never do that and I’m not going to start. I think they have to adjust to what I do.”
Husky center Nate Roberts, sitting next to Brown during a postgame news conference, smiled and added: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
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