At the beginning of the year, the UCLA men’s basketball team set three goals for the season.
The Bruins completed the first when they came back to defeat Stanford on March 6, clinching the regular-season Pac-10 title.
On Saturday, the second goal was on the line, again against the Cardinal. Leading by one point with seven seconds to play in the Pac-10 Tournament championship game, freshman center Kevin Love inbounded the ball to junior guard Darren Collison, who was immediately hacked by Stanford’s Mitch Johnson.
The Bruins had been horrendous at the foul line all game, but Collison ““ the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player ““ sank both free throws.
Stanford had one last chance, which took the form of an off-balance 3-point try by Anthony Goods. The ball clanged off one side of the rim, and UCLA had a 67-64 win.
Now on a 10-game win streak, the Bruins (31-3) can set their sights on the NCAA Tournament championship ““ goal No. 3 ““ as the top seed in the West Region.
“We’ve won two championships now of the three we want to win,” Love said. “Hopefully we can get that third one.”
Early on, the Bruins’ second championship seemed far from guaranteed. Playing without junior forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, who re-injured his left ankle during Friday’s semifinal win over USC, UCLA had another injury scare less than a minute into the game. Love tweaked his back and seemed visibly hobbled, so much so that he had to be replaced by senior Lorenzo Mata-Real 44 seconds into the game.
After the game, coach Ben Howland didn’t sound concerned about the long-term injury risk posed by sending Love back into the game.
“I figured he’d be okay,” Howland said. “We wanted to win this game.”
Love returned, but looked limited much of the first half. He played better in the second, and finished with 12 points and 6 rebounds in 32 minutes.
“The first time I touched the ball and tried to explode to the hoop I felt a tight pull, kind of a cramp in my back,” Love said. “I tried to go right back up again, and couldn’t get any more lift.
“It was really that way the whole first half, and the second half I tried to play through it as much as possible.”
With their inside game in poor health, the Bruins’ guards took over. Collison burned the Cardinal repeatedly with the pick-and-roll, finishing with 28 points on 12-of-22 shooting.
“I felt really confident,” Collison said. “It was fortunate that they had a hard time stopping the pick-and-roll, and I just took advantage of it, getting my guys open and creating for myself.”
UCLA’s shooters seemed fatigued, as the Bruins shot an uncharacteristic 27-of-71 from the field and 9-of-23 from the free-throw line.
They responded by beating the Cardinal on the glass, grabbing 21 offensive rebounds and outrebounding Stanford 43 to 35. Junior Josh Shipp and sophomore Russell Westbrook made surprising contributions in that area, finishing with 9 and 11 rebounds, respectively.
“It was just effort,” Shipp said. “We knew coming into this game that it was a big point of emphasis, we knew to crash the boards hard. We did a lot of rotating, so most of the responsibility relied on me and Russell down there.”
After the win, the Bruins looked relaxed but not overly excited. When told by one reporter that some media members believe the biggest obstacle between UCLA and their final goal of a national championship was a lack of consistent outside scoring, Collison shrugged.
“This is all we’ve got, and this is what we’re going to go with,” he said. “We’re going to take it one game at a time.”