ESPN Men's Basketball

Updated: March 18, 2006, 11:06 PM ET

Jensen denied Augustine and Huskies move on

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By Wayne Drehs
ESPN.com

SAN DIEGO -- He wasn't invited to the postgame interview session. There weren't many reporters surrounding his locker. But the game ball cusped in the arms of Washington senior Mike Jensen told the story.

With his team down 11 and less than 12 minutes remaining against Illinois here Saturday, his head coach had put the game on his shoulders. The message was clear, simple and easy for anyone within earshot of the Husky bench to hear.

Stop James Augustine and we win this game.

Up to that point, the Illini senior forward had bludgeoned the Huskies inside, scoring 19 points and grabbing seven rebounds as the primary catalyst in a surge that erased Washington's 15-point first-half lead.

But now, for Jensen, came a chance at redemption. It was a clean slate. His four teammates on the floor had his back. His coach did, too. Now he just needed to do it.

"Coach patted me on the butt, looked me in the eyes and told me that he needed me," Jensen said. "Right there, I didn't care about anything else in the world other than not letting James Augustine catch the basketball. If I was going to wear out the bottom of my shoe, he wasn't going to get that ball."

For one of the two seniors, the remaining 12 minutes would be the last of their college careers. One of them was going to be celebrating, a berth in the Sweet 16 against Duke or Connecticut the reward for his effort. The other would be taking off his jersey for the very last time.

So Mike Jensen used his elbows. He used his torso. He used his butt. He stretched his 6-foot, 8-inch frame as far as it would go. And the Illini struggled to get the ball into the hands of their senior leader.

"I put my whole body in front of him," Jensen said. "I elbowed him. I butt-fronted him. I shoved him. Whatever it took. A couple times he got frustrated -- he'd push me or shove me -- but I just pushed him right back."

Dribbling, shooting and driving in front of those two were three more seniors -- Illinois' Dee Brown and Washington's Brandon Roy and Bobby Jones. All of them refusing to lose.

When Augustine couldn't get the ball down low, it fell to Brown to put some Illinois points on the board. He struggled, missing six of his last seven shots, including a 25-footer that could have tied it with three seconds left. The man guarding him virtually throughout? Jones.

On the other end, Roy fought through the physical pounding offered by the Illini defense, chipping in seven points down the stretch. And Jones sank three field goals with less than a minute left to help seal it.

But the story of these seniors was told in the paint, where Augustine failed to touch the ball where he could do something with it. His final production after Washington coach Lorenzo Romar called timeout with 11:36 left: two rebounds, two fouls.

"They took away all the passes," Augustine said afterward. "I couldn't get the ball."

Said Romar: "When Mike decided to knuckle down and really prevent him from getting the basketball, there it was. I don't think we could have won the game without it."

After the game, a box score was unnecessary to tell what had happened. When Jensen walked into the Husky's locker room, he was mobbed by his teammates and handed the game ball. A half hour after the game ended, he was still sitting in front of his locker, still holding onto that ball.

"It's the stuff you can't see on television -- I'm not going to win any awards or get all the attention, but the guys in this locker room and the coaches know. That means more than anything."

At the other end of the hallway, in the other locker room, Augustine sat in a folding chair, his head down, his face blank, surrounded by the spotlights and television cameras of the Chicago media. His jersey was still on, covered by an Illinois warm-up. A year ago in Indianapolis, he had scored a career-high 23 points and grabbed 11 rebounds to lead the nation's No. 1 team past Nevada in the second round. He and Brown had combined to win 114 games in four season. But now it was over.

"We just didn't execute," he said. "They took us out of what we wanted to do."

Augustine's final tallies of 19 points and nine rebounds far outweighed Jensen's six and three, but it didn't matter. Washington 67, Illinois 64 did.

"It's the definition of what college is all about," Jensen said. "You deal with challenges, you face adversity and it's what you do, how you handle those that are at the core of the type of person you are.

"He got me in the first half; I got him in the second half. Thankfully, I'm moving on and he's the one going home. Now it's time to celebrate."

Wayne Drehs is a staff writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at wayne.drehs@espn3.com.