Everything went according to plan for the UCLA women’s basketball team in the first half of its contest against Cal.
The Bruins were cruising, up 11-2, as late as six minutes into the game last night.
UCLA’s signature defense was clicking. The Bruins forced five turnovers in the Bears’ first eight possessions and held Cal All-American senior forward Ashley Walker scoreless for the first 15 minutes of the game.
At Haas Pavilion, UCLA took into the locker room a one-point halftime lead over the top team in the Pac-10.
But the second half was an entirely different story.
The No. 7 Cal Bears (17-2, 8-0 Pac-10), led by Walker, decided to assert themselves in the second half and make it clear why they are atop the conference standings. They leaned on their inside game and pulled away from the Bruins (14-5, 5-3 Pac-10) in the second half, en route to a convincing 64-48 win that snapped the Bruins’ three-game winning streak.
“I think we were a team that played for 20 minutes,” coach Nikki Caldwell said. “I felt like the first half, we really stuck to our game plan, we really executed defensively, and then in the second half we got away from that. When you have All-American players like Ashley Walker, she is going to try to establish herself, which she did.”
After being held to a season-low 22 points in the first half, the Bears came out of the locker room determined to establish their presence in the post. Walker broke out of her scoring slump and finished the game with 17 points, after registering only four before intermission.
“They really came out establishing Walker, and they came out with a game plan to get the ball to her,” Caldwell said. “We knew that, but we didn’t counter it.”
UCLA also uncharacteristically lost the battle of the boards. Cal out-rebounded the Bruins 36-26, getting 12 of those rebounds and 11 points from their other star, senior center Devanei Hampton.
Conversely, the Bruin offense struggled to get things going in the second half, relying on 11 straight points from sophomore guard Doreena Campbell, who finished with a team-high 13.
After drawing to within three points, down 41-38 with just over 10 minutes to go, the Bruins offense went dormant, scoring only four points in the next eight minutes. Junior guard Erica Tukiainen was the only Bruin other than Campbell to score in the double digits, with 11 points for the night.
So while the Bruins showed they can play with the top-tier teams, it was essentially another game in which they failed to put in 40 minutes of consistent play.
UCLA will have another chance to prove themselves as a legitimate tournament team when they travel to Maples Pavilion to challenge No. 9 Stanford on Sunday.
“Being competitive and playing disciplined basketball, that should be a given,” Caldwell said. “We are trying to get to that point where we play that way all the time.”