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Cat''s out of the bag after Dawgs'' three-day run.

Article Excerpt
Byline: PAC-10 NOTEBOOK By Bob Clark The Register-Guard

It's not as if Washington has never been a basketball power. The 1953 Huskies coached by Tippy Dye reached the Final Four. From 1927 through 1939, Washington won eight league titles and finished second the other five seasons.

No wonder Hec Edmondson, then the coach, had the arena named after him. What's left for Lorenzo Romar? He appears to have the 14th-ranked Huskies headed back to being champions of at least the Pac-10, and certainly of the Great Alaska Shootout, which Washington won over the weekend by defeating Utah, Alabama and Oklahoma.

When did a Pac-10 team last play through 48 hours of nonleague action as impressively? That's like a conference weekend, with a nonleague foe from the nation's top 20 in the middle on Friday night.

`I firmly believe we're one of the best teams in the nation and if they could hang with us and pull it out, they can play with anybody,' said Chuck Davis of Alabama, a team that reached the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament last season.

Oklahoma forward Kevin Bookout compared the Huskies to the Oklahoma State team that reached the Final Four last season.

`Those guards can really play, and the big guys know their role,' Bookout said. `They can definitely play with anybody.'

Up next is the team the Huskies haven't been able to play with recently, Gonzaga. That test comes Wednesday in Spokane, and Washington has lost...