SALT LAKE CITY — Colorado coach Tad Boyle sounded frustrated in the bowels of the Coors Events Center following his team’s 69-56 loss to UCLA on Thursday.
Despite taking question after question from local reporters about the absence of star guard Spencer Dinwiddie, he wasn’t using any excuses.
“It’s not about one player,” Boyle said. “It’s a team game.”
UCLA wasn’t there to hear Boyle speak, and for about 35 minutes of a 74-69 loss to Utah, the team played through one player, as sophomore guard/forward Kyle Anderson’s career high 28 points, seven rebounds and seven assists were backed up by all-around poor team production.
The Bruins turned the ball over 15 times in the game and shot just 31 percent in the first half as a 10-point Utes lead at the break swelled to as many as 17 with only 12:43 to play.
“We came out and we were lackadaisical. We weren’t running much offense and we were lazy on defense,” said freshman guard Zach LaVine, who scored 11 of his 15 points in the second half. “You’ve got to focus on those things. We came here and took them lightly and they smacked us right in the face.”
It was a smack that tasted of home cooking. Los Angeles native Delon Wright tallied 12 points for Utah (14-4, 3-3 Pac-12), including a free throw to put the Utes up by five with 11 seconds to go. Pacific Hills High School alum Brandon Taylor chipped in with another 12 points, while Dakarai Tucker, formerly of Serra High School, had eight points.
When the Bruins finally decided to show some life, it was too late. Made jumpers and eight forced second-half turnovers made it a two-point game with 23 seconds to go, but the clock and all remaining timeouts ran out, as did UCLA’s luck.
“I liked our guys’ effort … to get back in it and give ourselves a chance, they did give us some fight,” said coach Steve Alford. “I thought we got back in it, but this was a road trip where we didn’t make a lot of shots and that put a lot of strain on us.”
On Thursday at Colorado, the No. 25 Bruins (14-4, 3-2) shot under 40 percent but managed to play effective defense down the stretch and claw out a win. On Saturday, the shots again didn’t fall, but UCLA’s intensity did.
Junior guard Norman Powell and sophomore guard Jordan Adams, both starters, were scoreless in the first half. Freshman guard Bryce Alford, who played 19 minutes, celebrated a not-so-happy 19th birthday by failing to record a field goal for the second straight contest.
“We were dazed for almost the whole game, until nine minutes to go in the game,” LaVine said. “We looked like we weren’t here, really. We’ve just got to play every game like it’s our last. If we played the whole game like we played the last nine minutes it wouldn’t have been close.”
In the absence of a consistent offensive game, the ball remained in Anderson’s hands, and it was through the sophomore that the Bruins had their greatest productivity. Anderson nailed all five of his three-point attempts and missed just six times in 16 field goal attempts for the game, but UCLA still couldn’t finish in front of a hungry Utah team and its 12,000-plus screaming fans.
Instead of a comeback victory to cap off its first road trip of the season, UCLA has a head-scratching loss to work past in preparation for a Thursday home game against Stanford.
“It’s not a step in the right direction,” Anderson said. “If you win that first one, you’re supposed to have a lot of momentum and come out the complete opposite of how we did as a team.”