Michelle Augustavo is considered a leader on the UW women’s basketball team, and in the Huskies’ rivalry game — and Pac-10 opener — against Washington State Saturday, she showed why.

The senior shooting guard didn’t post career-high-level numbers but did the little things to help the Huskies (5-6, 1-0 Pac-10) pull away from the Cougars (7-5, 0-1 Pac-10) after a rough first half to win for the 27th straight time against their Apple Cup rival, 71-58, in front of 3,378 at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.

“I just tried to take over [after injuries to Kristi Kingma and Laura McLellan], make plays and keep us above water until we could get some people back in the second half,” Augustavo said.

The Huskies fell behind 13-5 with 12:58 to go in the first half, a far cry from their 84-40 blowout victory over the Cougars at home last year.

UW head coach Tia Jackson said their slow start can be attributed to improvement by WSU.

“I don’t know that we started off shaky, I think that they started off pretty well,” Jackson said. “They’re a much improved team. We were expecting it to be a battle from the jump and it definitely was.”

McLellan and other players were also visibly frustrated with their poor start but Augustavo’s leadership — and early buckets — helped the Huskies cope and move on. Augustavo scored five crucial points in a 15-4 run at the end of the half to give UW a permanent 37-28 lead.

“Washington State came out really well,” Augustavo said. “I think our shots weren’t really falling right off the bat, but I just tell [teammates] to hang with it and we’ll be fine, and we ended up being alright.”

Said Jackson of Augustavo’s play: “She’s poised; we call her the calmest amidst the storm. I know what I can expect from her, no surprises whatsoever when she’s on the floor. She’s playing extremely confident right now.”

The second half resembled the latter part of the first as the Dawgs continued to make baskets with ease — 60 percent shooting in the second half — and grab crucial rebounds on defense.

McLellan overcame an early tweak in her leg to finish with 10 points and six rebounds while Sami Whitcomb, who only scored four points in the first frame, caught on fire in the second by adding 13 to her 17 total points, nine of which came on 3-pointers.

“I think we were taking better shots, taking time setting up our offense and I think our defense really stepped up,” Whitcomb said. “We recognized that offensively things weren’t going our way but defensively we really just buckled down and did what we needed to do.”

That defensive effort held Washington State to just 23.4 percent shooting from the field in the second half and a paltry 4-19 from beyond the arch in the game.

Now the Huskies have only one task to complete before continuing Pac-10 play: get healthy. Injuries have meant little to no playing time for Kingma, Mackenzie Argens, Liz Lay and Sara Mosiman.

Augustavo isn’t concerned about the injuries but hopes the team returns to form soon.

“We’ve dealt with this adversity before,” she said. “Last year we were 10 times more injured than we are this year. [We] just hope that it’s not too bad and they recover quickly because we definitely need them.”

The Huskies will certainly need everyone healthy next weekend when they travel to the Bay Area to face off against No. 8 Stanford and No. 9 Cal.

Reach sports editor Allen Wagner at sports@dailyuw.com.