The single player who made the single biggest difference in
UCLA’s 86-81 overtime loss wasn’t Jason Kapono.
It wasn’t Cedric Bozeman.
In fact, it wasn’t any of the Bruins’ assorted
All-American, all-league, all-everything superstars.
No, it was a 6-foot-10-inch, 280-pound center named Jason
Keep.
Jason Keep?
Yep, the senior center singlehandedly dictated the pace of the
game, from his early uncontested layups to his snarling rebound
that gave San Diego 35 precious more seconds on the shot clock in
overtime.
“This guy sitting next to me is just hard to guard,”
Toreros coach Brad Holland said in the postgame press conference, a
smiling Keep sitting contentedly to his right.
Keep finished with 30 points and 16 rebounds in 39 minutes, but
his mere presence presented UCLA’s largely ineffective
centers with such problems that he forced the Bruin defense to
collapse throughout the night.
“A lot of times, I had to come over and help,”
junior T.J. Cummings said. “And that stopped our
rotation.”
When the rotation stopped, San Diego’s guards needed only
to swing the ball around and set a couple of screens to free up
shots from behind the arc. The Toreros shot just nine of 29 from
three-point range, but they sank shots at crucial moments.
UCLA head coach Steve Lavin seemed to eventually concede the
paint to San Diego, as he tried to rotate Cummings and sophomore
Josiah Johnson down low. Johnson was most effective at damage
control, but Keep continued to rack up three-point plays as the
second half wore on.
Freshmen Michael Fey and Ryan Hollins played a combined five
minutes ““ all in the first half ““ and appeared
reluctant to challenge the bigger, more confident Keep.
With Cummings in his first season as a starter and even less
experience behind him, Lavin and the Bruins don’t expect to
be a post-oriented team. But they’ll also have to at least
contend with the likes of Arizona’s Channing Frye and
Kansas’ Nick Collison, who ““ no offense to Keep, the
senior from Moscow, Id. ““ are far more talented.
“He took us out of our shell and gave them rebounds that
led to second and third shots for them,” Lavin said.
Not bad for a transfer from Oklahoma State who was once a
bloated 300 pounds and didn’t exactly have a wide variety of
schools from which to choose.
“I heard from a lot of Division II schools, but not as
many D-I places,” Keep said. “These guys (San Diego)
gave me the best chance.”
After Keep’s dominance and San Diego’s
program-defining victory, the Toreros might think it was more like
the other way around.