Junior guard Malcolm Lee shows frustration on the bench after being taken out of the game. Lee injured his left knee March 3, and was limited to 28 minutes of play during the Bruins’ loss at Staples Center.
Maybe UCLA really wanted an extended period of rest.
Maybe the pileup of various injuries and illnesses was too much to overcome.
Maybe it was the dilemma of playing against a team fighting desperately for survival.
Whatever the case, UCLA was shellacked Thursday night at Staples Center and dropped its Pac-10 Tournament quarterfinal game to Oregon 76-59.Â
“We really laid an egg tonight,” coach Ben Howland said.
Oregon took that egg and scrambled it, fried it and poached it. The Bruins looked out of sorts from the start, falling behind big in the first half and was never able to get back up off the mat.
The No. 7-seeded Ducks (16-16, 7-11 Pac-10) ““ which needs to win the entire tournament in order to qualify for the NCAA Tournament ““ possessed all the energy and were executing both offensively and defensively.
No. 2-seeded UCLA, meanwhile, looked like it would rather be at home making omelets than playing a basketball game. Perhaps the Bruins (22-10, 13-5) figured that having beaten Oregon twice already this season would guarantee a win in round three.
“We came in here with too cool of an attitude,” sophomore forward Tyler Honeycutt said. “They came out with more energy; they were ready to play.”
Oregon built a formidable lead in the first half, capped by a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from about 30 feet by a running Garrett Sim to give the Ducks a 38-24 advantage at the break.
This time around, UCLA wasn’t able to conjure up any second-half magic. Less than a week after overcoming a 13-point halftime deficit to beat Washington State, UCLA saw its deficit extend during the final twenty minutes. Oregon continued to sizzle shooting the ball, and finished the night with a 49 percent field-goal percentage.
Sophomore E.J. Singler paced the Ducks with 24 points and junior guard Malcolm Armstead added 13. Free throws included, the pair combined to make 24 of their 29 shots. Oregon’s players put on an offensive clinic, consistently blowing by UCLA defenders to get to the rim for easy buckets.
UCLA, meanwhile, got a decent performance from sophomore forward Tyler Honeycutt, who paced the Bruins with 19 points but on just 5-of-13 shooting from the field and 1-of-5 from beyond the arc.
Against an undersized Oregon squad, UCLA big men Joshua Smith and Reeves Nelson combined for just 12 points. Nelson was given a technical foul in the second half for something he yelled.
The defeat was felt from top to bottom.
“No one on our team played well tonight,” Howland said. “It was everybody; it was the entire team.”
The Bruins conceded that they overlooked an Oregon team hungry to make a run at the automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament given to the winner of this weekend’s tournament.
Although the loss shouldn’t affect UCLA’s chances of being invited to the tournament on Sunday, it could very well play a big factor on the Bruins’ potential seed. If there’s any silver lining to be found in a such a humiliating defeat, maybe it’s that there will be no grueling conference tournament run to elicit any more demands on the Bruins’ bodies.
“I guess we get two days more rest,” Nelson said.
It seemed like everything went wrong on this night for UCLA. The Bruins had trouble performing relatively simple tasks such as making free throws or stopping dribble penetration. They even had trouble counting ““ the Bruins received a technical foul in the first half for having six players on the court coming out of a timeout.
“That right there was indicative of the night,” Howland said. “That that could actually happen was unbelievable.”
He could just as well have been talking about the night as a whole. It was apparent from the onset who the hungrier team was.
“They just wanted it more than we did, really,” Nelson said. “Just one of those days.”