Redemption.
Facing the same Washington State team that came into Pauley Pavilion and shocked the UCLA men’s basketball team last month, the No. 2 Bruins achieved a sense of revenge on Thursday night in the quarterfinals of the Pacific Life Pac-10 Men’s Basketball Tournament, defeating the No. 7 Cougars 64-53.
The Bruins will face the No. 6 USC Trojans in the semifinals tonight at 8:30 p.m. at the Staples Center.
Senior point guard Darren Collison led the team with 15 points, while junior forward Nikola Dragovic added 12 points.
Unlike the last meeting between the two teams, when the Cougars shot 58.8 percent from the field in an 82-81 win, the Bruins shut down the Cougars with a stifling defensive performance reminiscent of past UCLA teams. UCLA held Washington State to 20.6 percent shooting in the first half (7-of-34) and 30.0 percent for the game.
“That’s definitely one of our best defensive efforts in quite awhile and that’s what it takes to win in postseason play,” coach Ben Howland said.
A large part of the defensive performance was the tremendous job the Bruins did in shutting down two of the Cougars main scoring threats, Taylor Rochestie and Klay Thompson. After burning the Bruins in the last meeting with a career-high 33 points, Rochestie was held to just eight points on 1-of-11 shooting. While Collison led the defensive attack on Rochestie, after the game he said it was a team effort.
“It wasn’t just me,” Collison said. “You can’t stop good players; you can only contain them and try to lower their field goal percentage.
But you’re not going to stop him from taking those shots or stopping his moves with a good player like that. The credit’s not just for me, it’s for the team.”
Thursday night Holiday got another shot at guarding fellow freshman Thompson, and the results were much improved. Holiday, who scored 10 points, held Thompson to five points on 2-of-11 shooting.
“I thought Jrue Holiday’s sense of urgency defensively was so good tonight,” Howland said. “He was very good both ends, but that’s just an outstanding defensive performance.”
After Washington State took an early 5-4 lead in the first half, the
Bruins went on a 21-0 run over the next seven minutes to take a 25-5 lead with 9:41 left in the half, providing enough of a cushion for the rest of the game.
Playing in their first game of what the Bruins hope to be a lengthy postseason, Collison said he was proud of the effort the team showed.
“I thought the team felt great today,” Collison said. “I don’t know if it was the later game or not but I thought everybody was real in it, real enthusiasm for the game. Unlike for the second time we played
Washington State, our intensity was real high at a high level, and we’ve been saying it all year long: When our intensity is at a high level it’s going to be real hard to beat us, and I thought we did that tonight.”