Northwestern-Washington tale of teams walking down similar paths

The men's basketball seasons for Washington and Northwestern have been nearly mirror images of each other.

Right down to the color purple on their uniforms.

Both the Huskies (11-10, 3-7 Big Ten) and Wildcats (10-11, 2-8) have endured multiple narrow losses heading into their Saturday matchup at Evanston, Ill.

But they did diverge Thursday night.

While Washington was taking a 75-66 loss at No. 9 Illinois, Northwestern was putting a 94-73 beatdown on visiting Penn State.

"That was a huge win for us...