The Associated Press

STANFORD, Calif. - When Julius Barnes moves to shooting guard he becomes a completely different type of player.

Barnes, who starts at point guard, scored 21 of his 29 points in the second half as No. 24 Stanford beat Washington 78-69 on Thursday night. Barnes scored 19 of his points from the 2-guard spot.

"I didn't expect to be as open as I was and I was a little surprised," Barnes said. "My thought process is to shoot and that's my only thought process."

Rob Little added 12 points for the Cardinal (18-6, 9-3 Pac-10), who beat Washington for the 10th straight time at home. Josh Childress had 11.

Doug Wrenn scored 23 points to lead the Huskies (8-13, 3-9), who fell to 1-7 on the road and lost for the fifth time in six games overall. Nate Robinson and Curtis Allen each had 16 points.

Washington, which had just seven rebounds in the second half, has lost 21 consecutive games to ranked opponents on the road.

Stanford, which hadn't played at home in 19 days, won its sixth in seven games since losing 73-68 to Washington in Seattle last month.

"We knew if Barnes got hot we'd have a hard time stopping him," Wrenn said. "Hardly anybody can stop him cold."

The Cardinal, picked to finish seventh in the conference, have the same record after 24 games as last year, when they were favored to win the title.

The Huskies played without starting center Anthony Washington, who missed his third game with a sprained left foot.

The teams exchanged the lead four times and were tied on three other occasions in the first nine minutes of the second half.

Stanford broke a 52-all tie with a 15-2 run that began with Barnes' jumper with 9:56 left. Barnes, who scored a career-high 33 points in his last game against Oregon State, added three 3-pointers as the Cardinal opened a 67-54 advantage less than three minutes later.

"When Jason (Haas) comes in, that puts Barnes in a completely different spot on the court and changes his thought process," Stanford coach Mike Montgomery said.

Wrenn scored Washington's first 10 points and 12 of its first 14. He was 7-of-9 from the field in the first half.

"We took ourselves out of the game in the second half," Wrenn said. "We were trying to make big plays and it didn't work. That first half was about as best as we can play."

Stanford took a 28-16 lead in the first 12 minutes but the Huskies roared back, making their last seven shots of the half and shooting over 59 percent from the field.

"The last eight minutes of the first half were the best minutes we have played on the road this year," Washington coach Lorenzo Romar said. "We were penetrating their zone, finishing our shots and causing turnovers. In the second half we just lost sight of Barnes. This is what he does, he finds an open spot and makes it from 25 feet if you let him."

The Cardinal entered leading the Pac-10 in defensive field-goal percentage, allowing opponents to shoot just over 40 percent. The Huskies became just the second team to shoot better than 50 percent against Stanford.

Robinson capped a 22-7 run in the final eight minutes of the first half by picking off a Stanford pass and racing the length of the court for a layup with 3 seconds remaining to give the Huskies a 38-35 halftime advantage.