Friday, January 10, 1997
M. HOOPS:
Stanford hands UCLA its worst loss ever, 109-61By Emmanuelle
Ejercito
Daily Bruin Staff
STANFORD, Calif. — The UCLA basketball team lost a game by 48
points last night.
The UCLA basketball program, one of the most consistently
successful in the nation, was on the losing end of a 109-61 blowout
last night in Maples Pavilion in Palo Alto. Just two years removed
from a national championship, the Bruins now face the task of
convincing themselves that they can be competitive in the Pacific
10 conference.
It wasn’t so much a question of what went wrong with the UCLA
men’s basketball team, but rather what didn’t go wrong for No. 21
Stanford.
Cardinal star point guard Brevin Knight opened the game up with
a three-pointer in what was apparently an omen of things to come.
In 24 minutes of play, Knight scored a game-high 25 points. The
senior was 6-of-11 from the field, including 6-of-7 from
three-point country, to help Stanford (9-2, 6-2 Pac-10) hand UCLA
its biggest margin of loss in school history.
"I think if we played well tonight we would have lost by 20,"
UCLA head coach Steve Lavin said. "Stanford played at the magic
level. There’s a confidence. It’s a snowball going down the hill.
It just picks up and feeds off it. It’s contagious and pretty soon
everyone on the team is playing at that magic level."
No matter which defense UCLA (7-4, 2-1) tried, Stanford found a
way to put the ball through the basket. The Bruins opened up the
game with a zone defense that had worked so well for them in the
past four games. But in the first five minutes of play, the
Cardinal made four of its school record-breaking 15 three-pointers
to take a commanding 17-1 lead.
With the hot Cardinal shooting 56.5 percent, the Bruins tried
their man-to-man defense with nine minutes to go in the first half,
but Stanford just kept increasing its lead, to 31 at half-time.
"We tried everything but nothing changed … I don’t know," J.R.
Henderson said. "Everyone knows that this wasn’t our team out there
and it was just one of those games."
It was just one of those games for UCLA. The nation’s leading
field-goal percentage team went without connecting from the field
until over five minutes had elapsed since tipoff. The Bruins were
on their way to shooting 37 percent from the field. And the Bruins
could not get second looks at the basket, as they were outrebounded
45-26. It was a game where the Bruins could not play their up-tempo
offense and fast-break opportunities were existent only for the
team in red.
And it was just one of those games where Knight proved why he is
the focal point of Stanford’s offense.
"I knew I had to be the guy that created," Knight said. "I was
feeling good, and the bottom line is that if you feel good, you
shoot it."
The leading scorer for UCLA was Toby Bailey, who tallied 14
points, followed by Charles O’Bannon with 11.
With their morale deflated by the 48-point loss, the Bruins will
apply a tourniquet to their wounded egos today with an off-day
practice in hopes of regathering themselves for the California game
on Saturday afternoon at the Cow Palace in Daly City.
"What I’m interested in now is how we do against Cal," said
Lavin, who stressed the importance of putting the Stanford loss
behind them.
"I told our guys that we can’t dwell on this one and try to
figure it out. We’re going to get paralysis from analysis."
Cal will be eager to join in on the open Bruin season that the
Cardinal initiated. The Bears scored an 83-71 victory against USC
on Thursday night, improving their record to 10-4 overall and 1-2
in the conference. The Golden Bears are led by Ed Gray, whose 21.2
points per game placed him second in the Pac-10 going into this
weekend’s actions.
Mark Dittmer, Daily Bruin Senior Staff, contributed to this
report.
Toby Baily surveys the final minutes of UCLA’s 109-61 loss at
Stanford