Fifteen feet stood between the UCLA women’s basketball
team and its biggest comeback win of the season.
Fifteen feet stood between them and a road win against a
crosstown rival, or perhaps more importantly to a conference foe
who overlooks them in the Pac-10 standings.
Fifteen feet stood between the Bruins and a win that would have
quieted any chirpings about their strength of character after being
on the wrong side of a handful of nerve-breaking close calls.
Fifteen feet. The distance from the tip of the backboard to the
free throw line is what separated UCLA (10-8, 5-4 Pac-10) from
erasing a 16 point, second half deficit and an emotionally charged
victory.
In a 73-70 loss to USC (13-5, 7-2) at the Los Angeles Sports
Arena on Saturday afternoon, missed free throws dampened an
otherwise gutsy comeback fueled by junior guard Noelle Quinn and
senior guard Nikki Blue.
“We make our free throws in the second half and we are
right back in the game,” coach Kathy Olivier said.
It’s not as though UCLA was horrendous from the free throw
line. They shot 25-37 on the day, which is just below their season
average of 68 percent.
But rarely does a game so definitively come down to the charity
stripe. It was not so generous to the Bruins considering the
alarming number of fouls (50) in the game and free throws attempted
(64) after both teams hacked their way into free throw bonus only
halfway through the second half.
USC built a 59-43 lead with nearly 17 minutes to play, as the
streaky perimeter shooting of junior guard Eshaya Murphy and
sophomore guard Camille LeNoir put UCLA in a hole.
But the heavy dose of fouls on both ends severed the flow on the
court. With a fat lead in hand and the game taking on a methodical
pace, the Trojans were caught on their heels. USC made only one
field goal in the final 12 minutes and 32 seconds.
“We played not to lose instead of to win and that’s
something we can’t do,” USC coach Mark Trakh said.
“I was a fan of the clock, because UCLA was coming back and
just ran out of time. Their deficit was just insurmountable to
overcome.”
Junior guard Noelle Quinn and senior point guard Nikki Blue
ignited a fire under their teammates and compensated for senior
guard Lisa Willis’ worst game of the year (only 1-11 from the
field and 0-6 behind the arc before fouling out).
While Olivier was demanding more intensity from her sideline, it
was Quinn who demanded the ball. She got into a rhythm and
didn’t feel shy about calling for the basketball in the
waning moments of the contest.
“I gave Nikki that look that I wanted the ball,”
Quinn said. “We [Quinn, Blue, and Willis] respect each other
as players and trust when one of us demands the ball.”
Although it was Quinn’s fluid jump shot and slashes to the
basket that brought UCLA all the way back to within two points with
59.6 seconds to play, the free throw shooting decided the
outcome.
USC, in spite of all of its offensive futility in the second
half, relied on the clutch free throws by LeNoir- she hit 12 of 14
from the line.
LeNoir’s biggest free throw conversion came with 5.6
second remaining and pushed the Trojan lead to three. Blue took the
inbounds pass, feverishly drove the length of the court and tossed
up an improbable three-pointer that glanced off the backboard.
Given the fluttering emotions that flared up after coming back
from the brink of a blowout, only to lose in the final moments, the
Bruins were not prepared to lose sleep over a missed shot here or a
layup that rimmed out there.
“An “˜L’ is an “˜L’,” Blue
said, shrugging her shoulders. “It hurts because it’s
USC, to me.”
“We have control over our own destiny,” Olivier
said. “This team is not going to fold and there are still
nine games left.”