Let there be no doubt, Washington State really did want it more.
Their players jumped into the stands after balls, sustaining injuries (and probably inflicting a few on cameramen, and other such lesser breeds), and generally doing their best to break a sweat.
Their fans were throwing things on the court after bad calls just three minutes into the first half.
Let’s go ahead and say the entire city of Pullman was amped (although the amount of wattage created from the 300 people living in Pullman can be debated).
And none of it mattered.
UCLA came in, took Washington State’s absolutely, positively, no-possible-way-they-had-anything-left best shot, and still managed to get a halfway-comfortable victory (for all those statisticians out there, the final score was 53-45).
That Darren Collison managed to carve up the Cougars’ defense in the second half is not so much a factor of poor defense on the part of Washington State, but exceptional play on the part of Collison and his cutters. The announcers on Fox Sports (who shall remain faceless and nameless, mostly because I know neither their faces or names) got one thing right: Collison was the best player on the court (and “by one thing right” I mean one thing. I think if you had put a gun to the announcers’ heads and asked them to get an out of bounds call correct, it was 50/50 whether the towel boys would have had some serious mopping up to do).
The Bruins were just a much more talented team, and they gave nearly their best effort. They didn’t play with breakneck intensity, but they didn’t really have to. These guys are peaking, and you kind of get the impression that they know it.
Yeah, if Washington State had more talent or if UCLA had Jordan Farmar in this game it could have easily become a Cougars’ victory, but I deal in facts, not speculation (ignore everything else I have ever written).
The Bruins had Collison, and the sophomore point guard carried them to their second consecutive conference championship.
That’s important not just because it means the announcer in Pauley Pavilion will say “29-time conference” instead of “28-time;” it is important because it locks up a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. In fact, I’m gonna go ahead and say it locks up the No. 1 overall seed.
I won’t get into it now kids, but the last time UCLA was the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament, Ed O’Bannon was kissing the floor of Pauley Pavilion and UCLA was hanging its 11th banner.
Just sayin’. Back to the game.
Washington State is a really well-coached team. Tony Bennett should win the National Coach of the Year award without a contest. Realize, Washington State was picked last in the conference. Last! If the Cougars had beaten UCLA and went on to beat USC on Saturday, they would have been co-conference champions.
I almost felt bad that the Cougars couldn’t pull off the upset. They played about as well as could be expected, defended better than any team I’ve seen since last year’s Bruins, and were a few missed shots away from really making a game of it.
If I were a basketball purist, I might have enjoyed seeing Washington State pull off the upset.
But I’m not, so it worked out OK for me.
E-mail Woods at dwoods@media.ucla.edu if you would like him to do an entire column in parentheses sometime.