And so it ends.
Three months and 24 days after it began, the UCLA men’s basketball season came to a close on Friday night at Staples Center. It ended in the same fashion as it started ““ with a loss ““ this one an 85-72 defeat by California in the semifinals of the Pacific Life Pac-10 Tournament.
Despite the career-best efforts of senior guard Michael Roll (27 points) and sophomore guard Jerime Anderson (15 points), the Bruins will enter the offseason without an appearance in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in six years.
“It’s a disappointing loss, especially the way we came out tonight,” coach Ben Howland said. “I thought that we played very well in the first 10 minutes of the game, and then they did a really good job of pressuring us.”
At the start of the game, it looked as if the Bruins might be ready to make what would amount to nothing less than a magical run to the Pac-10 Tournament championship.
Using the momentum from Thursday’s win over Arizona, UCLA made eight of its first 13 shots (61.5 percent) to take a 10-point lead with 12 minutes, 29 seconds remaining in the first half.
Additionally, the Bruins built a nine-point lead with 1:20 left in the first half on a Roll 3-pointer, part of his 16 points in the first half.
Yet that would signal the end of the good times and pipe dreams of the UCLA fans that were in attendance.
Cal cut into that nine-point deficit to trail at halftime by just four points. The Golden Bears pounced on the Bruins to start the second half with a pressure defense and newfound shooting touch. The Bears moved ahead 52-44 with 12:03 remaining in the second half on the strength of a 17-5 run since halftime.
After an impressive first half, Roll didn’t take a shot in the second half until 7:42 remained and the Bruins were trailing by 11.
“It’s just the way the ball worked,” Roll said of his second-half struggles.
Roll’s play served as an illustration of the Bruins as a whole offensively. Whereas UCLA was able to connect on 15 of its 26 shot attempts (57.7 percent) in the first half, it shot just 38.5 percent (10-of-26) in the second half to finish with a 48.1 shooting percentage.
“We had our chances,” Howland said. “We had a lead going into halftime. It was a 20-minute game with a four-point lead. We really didn’t do a good job at the beginning, the first five minutes of the second half scoring.”
Besides Roll and Anderson, the Bruins did not do much in the area of scoring.
Freshman forward Reeves Nelson, playing in his second game since sitting out four games, scored eight points, as did senior forward Nikola Dragovic. Freshman forward Tyler Honeycutt and sophomore guard Malcolm Lee each scored six points, while freshman forward Brendan Lane added two points to round out the scoring for the Bruins.
Cal was led by the Pac-10 Player of the Year, senior guard Jerome Randle, who scored 24 points on 7-of-11 shooting from the field.
Randle surpassed Sean Lampley as Cal’s all-time leading scorer.
With 35.3 seconds remaining in the game and the Bruins down by 12 points, Roll checked out of the game for the last time in his college career. The fans at Staples, realizing the moment, gave Roll a rousing standing ovation.
Even Cal coach Mike Montgomery participated, applauding Roll as the fifth-year senior made his way to the bench.
“He did a great job all year for us,” Howland said of Roll. “He was our most consistent performer, and (I am) proud of him and sad to see him go.”
A career-high mark in points in his final collegiate game would seem like quite an end to his career. Yet for Roll, the only important thing was that his time at UCLA had come to a close.
“It’s my last game here,” Roll said. “I don’t really care about the career high or anything like that. It’s just unfortunate that we lost and I’m done.”