R-E-S-P-E-C-T:
It means win
for California
By Randy Satterburg
Daily Bruin Staff
The buzzword emanating from the mouth of California head coach
Todd Bozeman Saturday was "disrespect."
After Cal handed No.4 UCLA its third home-court loss in the last
three years at the hands of the Golden Bears, 100-93, Bozeman spoke
to the media about an incident that took place Friday, in which he
perceived UCLA players and coaches to be disrespectful of a
practice he was trying to conduct in Pauley Pavilion.
Bozeman claims that Cal was scheduled to have practice there
from 1 p.m. until 3 p.m., and that UCLA interrupted prematurely by
taking the floor too early and laughing at Cal players while they
shot free throws.
"We owe a lot to UCLA," Bozeman said after the game, "because
yesterday when we were at practice I saw something I’ve never seen
before in my life. We were in the middle of (drills) and they
walked right through our practice.
"It was ridiculous. It was a sign of no respect."
Whether the incident in question occurred the way Bozeman
describes it will be debated in days to come  UCLA assistant
coach Steve Lavin called Bozeman’s account of the story a "major
exaggeration." Â but it gave the Cal head coach just enough
ammunition to fill his players full of grit, or something else that
rhymes with it.
California’s Monty Buckley apparently took his coach’s words to
heart, as he poured in 11 first half points to help the Golden
Bears take an early lead against UCLA. Buckley put the Bruins down
by 14 points with under nine minutes left in the half when he hit a
28-footer from straight away.
Ed O’Bannon led the Bruins back with 16 first half-points of his
own, and UCLA chipped the lead in half to seven points, 52-45, at
the break.
The Bruins trimmed away at that deficit behind a very
demonstrative George Zidek, who scored eight of his 17 points in a
six-minute span at the start of the second half to give UCLA its
first lead, 59-58, since the game’s opening minutes. O’Bannon then
converted a bank shot to give UCLA a three-point lead, its largest
 and last  lead of the game. But moments later,
O’Bannon picked up a blocking foul against Cal’s Tremaine Fowlkes,
his fourth personal, with 11:45 left in the game.
UCLA head coach Jim Harrick put O’Bannon back in at the 9:20
mark with the Bruins down 70-66, but Cal was able to exploit the
situation on its offensive end by letting Fowlkes take the ball at
O’Bannon in isolation, and by sticking three-pointers when UCLA
went to a zone at times to prevent a fifth personal foul for
O’Bannon from occurring.
"I just said to myself, ‘if you’re going to get beat, you’re
going to get beat with (O’Bannon) on the floor.’" Harrick said of
his decision to put O’Bannon back into the game.
The freshman Fowlkes, a teammate of Kris Johnson at Crenshaw
High School, scored 12 of his game-high 24 points in this stretch,
during which he helped put Cal back up by double-digits, 77-66,
with just over seven minutes to play.
UCLA saw that deficit swell to 14 points for a second time as
the Golden Bears continued to hit their free throws (74 .4 percent)
and shoot the ball (50.9 percent) better than they had performed in
recent weeks.
"When you climb the mountain and finally get there and get over
over the hump, then you get back down the mountain, its awfully
hard to climb back up again," Harrick said. "We fought hard to get
back in the game but they made their shots and there’s almost
nothing you can do about that."
With the victory Cal improved to 11-5 overall (3-4 in the
Pac-10). The win also completed a sweep in Los Angeles for the
Golden Bears, who had lost their last three conference games at
home.
The Bruins fell to 12-2 overall and 6-2 in the Pac-10 and saw
the advantage they held in the conference race after their own road
sweep in Arizona slip away some.
"We still know we’re a very good basketball team," Ed O’Bannon
said after eventually fouling out with a team-high 23 points. "Now
it’s just time to go up (to Berkeley) with a chip on our shoulders
and beat them."