SEATTLE “”mdash; With less than a minute left in the second half and his team furiously holding on to a five-point lead over visiting UCLA, Washington guard Tim Morris attempted to inbound the ball from right in front of the Bruins’ bench. Forward Alfred Aboya waited just across the sideline, arms spread to try and block Morris’ passing lanes.
The ball slammed directly into Aboya’s face, then bounced back out-of-bounds.
After a few chaotic moments ““ UCLA’s players looked equal parts shocked and angry, while the Huskies’ fans roared ““ the referee’s signal led to another inbounds pass, and Aboya and Morris faced off again.
This time Morris heaved the ball down the court, to a wide-open Quincy Pondexter. Pondexter missed the ensuing layup, but Washington’s Jon Brockman pulled down the rebound, fought his way past UCLA’s Kevin Love and Josh Shipp and laid the ball in.
It was a formula the Huskies employed all game: physical play, offensive rebounding and points in the paint.
The Bruins were never able to come up with a response for it.
No. 5 UCLA (21-3, 9-2 Pac-10) lost to Washington (13-11, 4-7 Pac-10) 71-61 on Sunday afternoon, in a hard-fought upset in front of a sellout crowd of 10,000 at Bank of America Arena.
“(Washington) did a great job,” UCLA coach Ben Howland said. “It just goes to show you that anybody can beat anybody on any given night in this conference. That was a classic example right there. They were 3-7 going into the night, we were 9-1. And they outplayed us.”
Throughout the game the Huskies seemed to be playing with more energy than the Bruins. That difference in effort showed up most clearly on the boards, where Washington outrebounded UCLA 44-36.
Even worse, 18 of those rebounds came on the offensive end, including nine by Brockman. That led to 20 second-chance points for the Huskies, and 38 points in the paint.
“They just were outhustling us today, they were on all the loose balls, they were just everywhere,” Shipp said. “(We knew) they were going to come out and have their very best effort, (but) unfortunately we just didn’t prepare enough. That’s on us. We just weren’t a team unit today.”
That lack of cohesion also showed on the offensive end, where the Bruins struggled, especially in the closing minutes of the game, when they were unable to cut the Huskies’ lead to less than three despite several chances to do so.
Freshman center Kevin Love, though frequently double-teamed by Brockman and Artem Wallace, had some success getting open, but his teammates were rarely able to get him the ball.
“It was one of those games where we should have gotten the ball inside more,” Shipp said. “It’s tough to say (why we didn’t), we just got caught up in the game. It’s more on us, but they did a great job of defense.”
The Bruins badly needed that inside scoring presence, because their outside shooting was ice cold. They shot only 1-of-16 from 3-point range, and that one made shot was by junior guard Darren Collison with just over two minutes left to play.
Making matters worse was the fact that those were Collison’s only points of the game.
“We (talk about working the ball inside) every day before the game, every day in practice (and) at halftime too, but today just wasn’t the day for it,” Love said. “It was frustrating, I’m not going to lie.”
Despite the fact that the Bruins were heavy favorites in the game, the feeling of traveling home from Seattle may be uncomfortably familiar to them: UCLA has now lost four straight at Washington, and no current Bruins were on the roster when UCLA last won here on Jan. 10, 2004.
“That should have been all the motivation we needed today; we’ve never gotten a win here,” Shipp said. “Unfortunately it just didn’t happen for us today.”
And as the Bruins prepared to return to Westwood, with their bodies and now their record a little bruised, Aboya chose to take the high road, refusing to call the Huskies’ physical play ““ including the pass that ended striking his nose ““ cheap. Aboya said he didn’t even say anything to Morris about the play.
“We had a game to win,” Aboya said. “You (have to) win the game first, and then you can talk back.”