SEATTLE — Cal Poly is the kind of program the Washington Huskies should defeat easily, even in a down year. Tuesday’s game should have been a tune-up, a romp, the kind of affair that concludes with walk-ons on the court and starters relaxing on the bench.

And the Huskies kind of, sort of, got there. It just took a while. They had to work a little harder for this one than a Pac-12 team should against a mid-major opponent, especially one picked by media to finish last in the Big West standings.

Still, there are a few positives to glean from the Huskies’ 77-61 win at Hec Edmundson Pavilion before a crowd of 7,175 on Tuesday night: chiefly, they didn’t lose. And they actually, truly played defense. Like, real defense, the kind that implied significant practice.

That was the primary reason why the Huskies were able to finally create some distance between themselves and an inferior opponent. Cal Poly shot only 32.3 percent from the field and just 23.5 percent in the second half, leading by a point at the break before slowly watching the Huskies build a double-digit lead they did not relinquish.

The Mustangs (6-6) made only one field goal during an eight-minute span in the second half, during which time the Huskies ripped off an 18-2 run to turn a 46-46 tie into a 64-48 lead with 6:11 to play.

Sophomore David Crisp led all scorers with 21 points, and the 6-foot guard added eight rebounds. Sophomore forward Noah Dickerson was essential. He finished with 12 points and 10 rebounds, and was mostly successful defending smaller, quicker players as the Huskies switched screens defensively.

Matisse Thybulle chipped in 15 points, including an emphatic put-back dunk that kept UW’s lead at 16 points with 4:34 to play.

Star freshman guard Markelle Fultz was mostly quiet, though he finished with 12 points and five assists and had an impressive dish to Dickerson for an easy dunk after wrapping a pass around a help defender.

It helped that the Mustangs simply did not shoot very well in the final 20 minutes. Cal Poly made 13 field goals in the first half, hitting 9 of 18 3-pointers. The Mustangs seemed content to pepper the Huskies with perimeter jumpers whenever they were available.

Kyle Toth, a fifth-year senior guard who entered the game making 3-pointers at a 54.8 percent clip, made three of them in the first half. Sophomore guard Donovan Fields attempted three and made all of them, and banked in a driving layup that gave Cal Poly a 32-22 lead with 4:43 left before halftime.

But the Huskies (6-5) closed the half on a 14-5 run, 3-pointers by Dominic Green and Thybulle helping to trim Cal Poly’s halftime lead to 37-36.

Cal Poly didn’t make its first 3-pointer of the second half until 2:47 remained, by which point the Huskies had already extended their lead enough to sub seldom-used guards Bitumba Baruti and Dan Kingma into the game.

UW’s final basket was Kingma’s banked-in 3-pointer in the final minute.

Against Cal Poly, that’s probably the way it should be.