STANFORD, Calif.—Coming out of halftime trailing Stanford by eight points, UCLA men’s basketball was looking to do what it has done so many times this season: outperform its opponent en route to a win. Instead the Bruins were met with something they’ve never seen before.
With 16:06 left in the game, Stanford junior guard Chasson Randle dribbled down the court on a fast break and tossed a lob to redshirt junior guard/forward Anthony Brown. But rather than finishing the alley-oop, Brown, in midair, threw a second lob to senior forward Dwight Powell, who slammed the ball home emphatically, converting on the elusive double alley-oop.
With Stanford’s lead at 13, its largest to that point, UCLA took a timeout to regroup and recover but never could, losing the back half of its Bay Area road trip 83-74 on Saturday.
Coming off what coach Steve Alford described as the team’s best win of the season at Cal, the Bruins suffered one of their worst losses in the eyes of junior guard Norman Powell.
UCLA failed to jump out to an early lead as it did against Cal, instead letting Stanford dictate the style and tempo of the game.
“What they did is what we wanted to do,” Powell said. “We wanted to be the aggressors, we wanted to come out and get on those types of runs and make them play catch-up, but they jumped on us and it was really frustrating.”
That frustration was apparent on the court as the Bruins looked helpless trying to deal with the Cardinal’s hot shooting. Stanford finished the game shooting 62.2 percent, and shot 73.7 percent after halftime.
While the Bruins’ defense was far from perfect, Alford praised the Cardinal more than he called out his own team.
“We had some defensive breakdowns, but there hasn’t been a team shoot that well against us all year and sometimes you gotta say congrats to the other team,” Alford said. “They played extremely well and we couldn’t match them tonight.”
After watching said shooting grow the Cardinal lead as high as 14, the Bruins put their foot down and started to claw their way back into the game. UCLA repeatedly made runs late in the second half and came within three and four points on several occasions, but each Bruin push was met with a brick wall in the form of Cardinal 3-pointers, halting any possible UCLA momentum.
“Once you feel like you’re getting it going and on the climb back up into the game and somebody hits a 3 like that it really kills momentum,” Powell said.
Most of those 3s were courtesy of Randle, who got off to a hot start and never looked back. Randle finished with a game-high 26 points, 21 of which came off of his seven 3-pointers.
Beyond Stanford’s (18-8, 9-5) lights-out shooting, No. 23 UCLA (21-6, 10-4) was haunted by a lack of aggression throughout the game, something Alford said could be seen in UCLA’s play from its turnovers to its defense. While his team only committed 12 turnovers, Alford noted many of them were not a result of aggressive play, but instead carelessness, as evidenced by sophomore guard/forward Kyle Anderson dribbling the ball off his leg and out of bounds on one occasion and fumbling the ball out of bounds off a drive on another.
Sophomore forward/center Tony Parker said UCLA’s struggles with aggression and defensive stops were a result of the team’s lack of preparation. But Parker placed the responsibility and blame on his own and his teammates shoulders, not those of his coaches.
“To be honest, we didn’t play like (we were ready for Stanford),” Parker said. “As far as the coaching staff, they did everything they could. … We gotta come out and play and we didn’t do that tonight.”