All the No. 9 Cal women's basketball team needed to do was win its last two games of the regular season, and it would be able to celebrate its first-ever conference championship.

All the Bears had to do was beat a team that it had defeated by 26 a month earlier.

But Sami Whitcomb had other plans.

The sophomore guard had a game-high 24 points-including 5-of-9 from three-to lead Washington over Cal 74-66 at the Bank of America Arena in Seattle.

The Huskies-who secured the No. 6 seed in the upcoming Pac-10 tournament and thus will not have to play Friday-played spoiler as the Bears now finish in second place, one game behind No. 7 Stanford in the final regular season standings.

"We've seen good teams lose to anybody," Cal guard Alexis Gray-Lawson said. "They can lose on any given day. We saw it happen to Stanford when they lost to USC and UCLA. We should have learned from that. I don't think that we did."

The Bears (24-5, 15-3 in the Pac-10) rallied from being down 14 with less than four minutes left to play to cut their deficit to three with 54 seconds left.

But Cal couldn't capitalize on several possessions down the stretch and a flagrant foul called on Gray-Lawson gave Washington (13-17, 8-10) two free-throws and an extra possession.

"We dug ourselves a hole," Bears coach Joanne Boyle said. "We had to get out of it. We were trading threes for free throws, but they were far enough ahead."

Cal came in with the best scoring defense in the Pac-10, holding teams to 53.0 points per game.

But Washington was the first team to score 70 points against the Bears since the Cardinal put up 72 against Cal on Jan. 26.

Three-point shooting allowed the Huskies to become just the second team in the conference to beat the Bears. Washington hit 53.3 percent from beyond the arc, led by Whitcomb's five three pointers.

"We're known for our defense," Gray-Lawson said. "We didn't come out and play Cal basketball. It was a number of things defensively. We didn't get enough transition buckets and of course that starts with our defense."

Whitcomb was on fire midway through the second half, hitting three of her threes in a two-minute span to spark a 12-4 Huskies run to take an 11-point lead.

Minutes later, Washington had its largest lead of the game at 14.

"Obviously, Sami came out and did a great job in the second-half," Cal coach Joanne Boyle said. "But I don't think it even started there. They were setting the tone more than we were setting the tone. They got a lot of confidence and they played hard. They pressed and they do some really good things. They set the tone of the game and that's what started it."

The Bears were led by Gray-Lawson, who scored a team-high 17 points in the loss.

Cal's usual scoring threats, center Devanei Hampton and forward Ashley Walker, scored nine and six points respectively as both were hampered by foul trouble.

Both low-post players were absent in the last six minutes of the first half, when the Huskies went on a 16-5 run capped by a Whitcomb three-pointer and secured a four point halftime lead.

Washington never looked back.

"It kills us. That absolutely kills us," said Boyle about Hampton and Walker being in foul trouble. "They have to stay out of foul trouble."

Tags: PAC-10 CHAMPAIONSHIPS