TEMPE, Ariz. — It doesn’t matter that the Bruins, despite having three forwards on the roster, are not a very tall team, or one that uses its height in an effective way. What’s more important is how they handle the bigs of the opposition.
We saw a team that matched up well with UCLA last week when Oregon visited Pauley Pavilion. Arizona, at least on paper, looked like it did as well, but Thursday’s game showed that the eye test has little predictive value.
It didn’t take much for Arizona State to exploit UCLA’s Achilles heel during Saturday’s 78-60 blowout, but the blueprint for beating this team that Oregon beat one week ago was on display.
When the Bruins started embracing their running game, two basic tenets of recent UCLA teams were abandoned: elite defense, particularly near the basket; and a calculated offense that could slowly pick apart whatever an opposing team threw at it.
The Bruins could have used some of both on Saturday.
Jordan Bachynski, as imposing a figure as the Pac-12 has, scored 22 points, grabbed 15 rebounds and blocked six shots.
“I hadn’t even heard of the guy and he was huge,” Shabazz Muhammad said.
Whether Muhammad meant “huge” literally or figuratively was unclear, and irrelevant anyways.
The Bruins didn’t have a full stable with Travis Wear sidelined, and, down to seven scholarship players, never established its up-tempo offense.
When possessions drag out through the shot clock, the Bruins thrive on their mid-range shooting. It’s a type of shot many teams have abandoned, either going for the easier two-pointers by the basket or the more rewarding threes.
The catalysts for UCLA’s mid-range game are the Wear twins, 6-foot-10-inch forwards who play like shooting guards the way they jump-start the Bruins’ jump-shooting.
UCLA was down a Wear on Saturday and David did little to make up for his brother’s absence. During a second half in which he shot 0-for-6, “Not Travis” air-balled one shot, missed badly off the backboard on another and sent a wide-open layup straight into the front of the rim.
Whether shots were getting blocked or not, they weren’t going in for the Bruins. They shot 41 percent from the field during the first half shooting an especially chilly 29 percent after halftime.
Arizona State’s shot chart looked different. Bachynski didn’t take a shot that wasn’t a layup or dunk attempt. Other Sun Devils like Carrick Felix didn’t take a single mid-range shot, doing his damage with layups, dunks and threes and nothing in between (apart from free-throws, which ASU did better on Saturday by getting to the line 19 times to UCLA’s six).
Bachynski and Felix combined to make 18 of 24 shots, all that the Sun Devils needed on a day when leading scoring Jahii Carson shot 4-for-16.
The best candidate for bodying up the 7-foot-2-inch Bachynski would have been 6-foot-11-inch freshman center Tony Parker, but he picked up two fouls in his first three minutes and defended like a matador for fear of picking up another.
This isn’t to say that any team with a big inside presence will beat UCLA, or we would have seen Arizona do just that on Thursday night. But the Wildcats didn’t. UCLA consistently ran faster than Arizona’s bigs could and pushed them away from the basket.
That’s UCLA’s formula for winning. On Saturday, the key to beating the Bruins was on display. The rest of the conference (like USC, with two 7-footers) are taking notes.
E-mail Menezes at rmenezes@media.ucla.edu.