BERKELEY “”mdash; It’s a new year, a new quarter, and a new Pac-10 season.
But the UCLA men’s basketball team is already staking its claim to the same position it held for most of 2007: the top of its league.
The No. 5 Bruins (14-1, 2-0 Pac-10) completed a road sweep of the Bay Area schools by defeating California (10-3, 1-1 Pac-10) on Saturday, 70-58. UCLA won its Pac-10 opener on Thursday against No. 20 Stanford, 76-67.
The two wins moved UCLA into a tie with Arizona State for first place in the conference.
“It’s a whole new season. I don’t even think about the 14-1,” coach Ben Howland said. “All I think about is the 2-0. We’re in a new season now, that (nonconference) season’s over, and we’re where we want to be coming out of the gate.”
The Golden Bears looked overmatched from the start. The Bruins opened up on a 13-2 run and lead by double digits for most of the first half. In the paint, UCLA’s interior defense held Cal’s inside tandem of Ryan Anderson and DeVon Hardin without a field goal in the half.
But Cal regrouped after halftime. The Golden Bears opened up with an 11-2 run, and with 14:14 to play Hardin completed a 3-point play to trim the Bruins’ lead to 38-36.
That was as close as the game would get. The next time down the floor the Bruins snared three straight offensive rebounds, then finally scored on a jumper by sophomore guard Russell Westbrook. After the Bruins got a defensive stop, Westbrook scored again on a fast break dunk, and the lead was secure once more.
“They made a run at us,” Howland said. “They made a run and cut it to two, but our guys showed their experience and their composure.”
One Bruin who didn’t have much experience going into the game but still showed plenty of resolve was Kevin Love.
The freshman center was dominant offensively and finished with 19 points and 14 rebounds, his seventh double-double of the year. His inside scoring and rebounding was especially valuable, given that the Bruins’ 3-point shooting ““ red hot against Stanford ““ had gone cold. UCLA finished 3-of-17 from beyond the arc against Cal.
Love was happy with his strong performance in his first Pac-10 action, but more pleased that it had resulted in two victories.
“We want this to be the third year in a row we win the Pac-10,” Love said. “For me, being a freshman, I want us to win every single thing that we can.”
Junior guard Darren Collison, playing without a knee brace for the second straight game, is beginning to look like he’s close to where he was physically at the end of last season.
While his statistics ““ 14 points, 2 rebounds, 5 assists ““ were merely solid, Collison hit several clutch jumpers in the second half and did a good job of controlling the tempo down the stretch to make sure Cal didn’t have a chance to make a second run.
Like Love, the veteran guard was quick to put the weekend’s victories in perspective.
“It’s definitely big for us,” Collison said. “I think a lot of teams won’t be able to get a sweep on this trip. It gives us momentum, and I think it places us at the front of the league with this win. It just lets people know we’re here to win a third one in a row.”
Westbrook, meanwhile, had another strong performance in his second game coming off of the bench. He had 11 points and seven rebounds, including five on the offensive end.
He also made a number of athletic plays that might have raised the eyebrows of the numerous NBA scouts in attendance.
There was the time in the second half he soared into the paint to pull an offensive rebound away from three Cal players, and there was the first-half alley-oop layup he made while being fouled.
Last but not least, he slammed home a rim-shattering dunk in the first half, taking off from just inside the free-throw line and making Cal’s Jamal Boykin’s attempt to play defense look positively foolish.
After the game, the soft-spoken Westbrook was matter of fact about the jaw-dropping play.
“Nobody’s going to stop me, so I just keep going,” he said. “That’s how it is. If nobody stops me, (I) just keep going ’til somebody stops me.”