PULLMAN, Wash. “”mdash; UCLA was held to a season-low 50 points
Thursday night.
And the Bruins won by 20.
That’s either great defensive intensity, incredible
offensive futility, or more than a little of both.
Whatever it was, No. 13 UCLA’s 50-30 victory over
Washington State certainly wasn’t pretty to watch. But for
the Pac-10-leading Bruins (20-4, 10-2 Pac-10), style points hardly
matter.
“I wasn’t spectating, I was playing,”
sophomore point guard Jordan Farmar said. “I’ll take
it. Any time we can win by 20 on the road, that’s a great
game for us, no matter what the score looks like.”
After the game, UCLA coach Ben Howland credited his defense.
And the defense ““ which held its opponent to the lowest
point total since Feb. 17, 1967, when UCLA beat Oregon 34-25
““ undoubtedly deserves a lot of the credit.
UCLA raced out to a 14-0 lead in the game’s first four
minutes behind its defensive intensity, while the Cougars (10-10,
3-8) were held to an eye-popping 12 points for the entire first
half.
“Our defense was absolutely unbelievable to start this
game,” Howland said.
But for the entire course of the game, Washington State’s
offensive ineptitude was staggering.
The Cougars shot 27.5 percent from the field for the game.
They missed all seven of their 3-point attempts.
The Cougars’ Aron Baynes led his team with 10 points,
while no one else scored more than four.
“We actually had a lot of good shots,” Washington
State coach Dick Bennett said. “Robbie Cowgill goes 1-for-11
““ now, I don’t think any of his shots were that bad.
That’s just physical and mental intimidation.”
Thursday night’s game had to be difficult for Bennett to
swallow. And Farmar, who led the Bruins with 20 points despite a
sprained left ankle, can only surmise what it must have been like
for the Cougar faithful.
“It was probably tough, and that’s what we
want,” Farmar said. “We want to come out here and play
hard, and take the life out of the building and the hearts out of
the players early. That’s what you’ve got to do on the
road.”
It’s a formula that’s worked so far, as
Thursday’s win brought UCLA’s road record this season
to an impeccable 6-0. The win also gave UCLA its first 20-win
season since 2001-2002, when coach Steve Lavin’s Bruins went
21-12.
But Thursday night that fact brought no real sense of
accomplishment.
“We feel like we’re capable of so much more,”
sophomore guard Arron Afflalo said. “We feel like we’re
one of the elite teams now, and we have to play like it. This team
won’t be satisfied with 20 wins. We want 30 wins.”
Afflalo, who draws pride from his play at the defensive end of
the floor, is beginning to see his own defensive attitude reflected
in many of his teammates.
Afflalo was responsible Thursday for holding Washington
State’s leading scorer Josh Akognon, who scored 25 points in
the Cougars’ 63-61 loss to UCLA on Jan. 12, to just four
points.
“Personally, I get mad when anybody scores, especially
when it’s on me,” Afflalo said. “That’s
starting to become a part of our team now. We don’t want
anybody to score on us. Every bucket should hurt us inside when a
team scores on us.”
In that case, there wasn’t much hurting Thursday.
After beginning the game on an 18-2 run, UCLA’s offense
sputtered. And though they led 26-12 at halftime, the Bruins were
cognizant of what happened last time the teams met.
Washington State scored 17 first-half points in that game but
exploded in the second half for 44. The Cougars were a missed layup
away from sending the game to overtime.
That kind of result seemed inconceivable Thursday.
“It wasn’t really, “˜Yeah, we held them to
12,’ because we knew what they were capable of,”
Afflalo said. “That’s why we were able to sustain what
we were doing.”