CORVALLIS, Ore.—Washington hadn’t swept the Oregon schools on the road since 2006.

Hadn’t won in Eugene in the same amount of time. Dropped two of its last three games in Corvallis. Even lost at Portland earlier this season.

Saturday night’s trek back up I-5 was a jovial one this time, though.

And after the Huskies finished disassembling Oregon State 85-59 Saturday in front of 6,648 at Gill Coliseum, they visited some more territory unfamiliar to them in recent years—first place.

UCLA’s loss to Arizona State and Stanford’s win over previously unbeaten California dropped both the Bruins and the Bears into a three-way tie with UW for the top spot in the Pac-10, a fitting reward for a very businesslike road sweep to give the Huskies their best Pac-10 start since 2005.

“This is just a start,” UW head coach Lorenzo Romar said. “They’re not giving out any trophies in the first five games.”

Washington (13-4, 4-1 Pac-10) will return home next weekend, though the way things have gone away from Hec Edmundson Pavilion, it may never want to. Since losing their season opener at Portland, the Huskies are 3-0 on the road, winning by margins of 20, 17 and 26—the latter being the most impressive, and not just to those around the UW program.

OSU head coach Craig Robinson had nothing but effusive praise for the team that dismantled his rebuilding squad.

“That,” Robinson said, “is a very good team there. I’m surprised they’re not ranked.”

OSU (6-10, 1-5 Pac-10), even if changed for the better from last year’s 0-18 crew, showed Saturday that it still doesn’t have the firepower to compete with a team of UW’s athletic caliber.

It took the Huskies a while to adjust to the Beavers’ half-court trap and 1-3-1 zone defense. OSU took a 17-10 lead on a lay-up by Seth Tarver just under nine minutes into the game.

“It took us a little bit to kind of get in a rhythm,” senior forward Jon Brockman said. “As soon as we figured it out, we knew where to get the ball; we worked in it pretty well.”

The Beavers’ zone turned to mush soon after, as UW simply imposed its will on the glass and feasted inside for a 50-26 edge in points in the paint.

Washington grabbed 17 offensive rebounds while the Beavers claimed only 19 total. And when it was over, they had been out-banged and out-hustled to the tune of a 46-19 UW rebounding margin.

Matthew Bryan-Amaning lived on the backboards. He finished with 12 points and snagged nine rebounds in just 19 minutes of playing time.

Brockman had his way as well, finishing with 16 points and cleaning up nearly every mess that Bryan-Amaning couldn’t.

As thoroughly dominant as the Huskies were on the glass, no UW player finished with a double-digit rebound total, bruising the Beavers with the definition of a rebound-by-committee effort. Brockman grabbed nine, Quincy Pondexter claimed five and even seldom-used Artem Wallace snagged four in just eight minutes.

This thing got out of hand so quickly in the second half that no Husky player logged more than 27 minutes. Every player available for action—save for Justin Holiday, who still grabbed four rebounds—found their way into the scorebook, and everyone played.

A seven-point halftime lead ballooned to 20 before the second half was even at its midway point, as Washington scored on its first 12 possessions of the half and emptied its bench not long after.

“What was it like?” Robinson asked rhetorically. “It was painful, is what it was like.”

Preparing now for a crucial home weekend against USC and UCLA, the Huskies can conjure up more memories of the Brandon Roy era with a couple of wins.

A sweep—if UW dare think that far ahead—would mean a 6-1 start, a feat also not accomplished since 2005, when the Huskies made it to the Sweet 16.

But the Trojans also appear to be a team that is starting to come together, picking up a sweep at home over No. 15 Arizona State and Arizona.

Focus, it seems, is no longer a problem for a UW team that all of a sudden looks like a March contender.

“We’re completely more cohesive,” Pondexter said after totaling 15 points and five boards in just 21 minutes. “We’ve been playing a lot better as a team. We hang out a lot more. I’m really excited to see how this season plays out.”

Reach reporter Christian Caple at sports@dailyuw.com.