There are no As for effort in basketball.
No “close but no cigars.” The horseshoes and hand grenades rule of thumb is in full effect.
But what UCLA did against No. 7 Arizona Saturday deserves some sort of credit.
Despite the 57-47 loss, the Bruins hung with the Wildcats for most of the game and might have even outplayed them. If not for some severe foul trouble and a poor shooting night from everyone except sophomore guard Bryce Alford, UCLA could easily have won that game.
Of course those are two very serious problems if you’re trying to win, but the way in which UCLA gave Arizona so much trouble showed how well this team is capable of playing.
The Bruins’ defensive performance was perhaps their best of the season as they completely threw the Wildcats off their game, making them look far from one of the top-10 teams in the nation.
Stanley Johnson, who is widely considered a lottery pick in the 2015 NBA draft, managed to score just seven points on 1-9 shooting. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, also likely a first-round pick should he choose to declare for the NBA draft, was held to just two points on 1-6 shooting. Brandon Ashley, Arizona’s second-leading scorer coming into the game at 11.6 points per game, had only five points on 2-10 shooting.
Rather than the 37.6 points per game that those three combined to average coming into Saturday, UCLA held them to 14 points on a combined 4-25 shooting.
Arizona as a whole, which entered Saturday leading the Pac-12 with a 49.6 field goal percentage and were second in points scored at 76.3, was held to 34 percent shooting and 57 points.
If not for the 27 fouls UCLA committed, leading to 25 Arizona free throw attempts, UCLA would have won that game, a game in which everybody had written them off.
Then there were the two lockdown stretches to open both halves. Starting the first half, UCLA held Arizona scoreless for the first 6:05 and didn’t allow Arizona to score a field goal for the first 7:25.
The Bruins went on a 17-0 run to open the second half, holding the Wildcats without a point for another 6:51.
To put those stretches in context, when Kentucky went on its infamous 24-0 run to start the game against UCLA in December, the Bruins went 7:39 before they first scored. UCLA nearly did the same to Arizona Saturday. Twice.
Yes the Bruins lost the game, yes they were out-rebounded by 17 and yes they struggled offensively nearly as much as the Wildcats. Still, they made a good team look bad Saturday night and that’s progress for a UCLA team that had little else to be positive about last week.
After its significant struggles against No. 1 Kentucky and then-No. 5 North Carolina earlier this season, UCLA showed against Arizona that it is capable competing with the nation’s best teams.
But with the loss, whether the Bruins get a chance to prove so once again in the NCAA tournament remains to be seen.
Mr. Bowman, I appreciate and enjoy reading your articles. You are fair and objective. You tell it like it is without sugarcoating it or making unnecessary negative comments about our players or coaching staff.
I like to read your opinion about Bill Walton constantly praising the other Pac 12 schools as if he is their ambassador promoting their schools and programs instead of making fair and balanced comments about the game. He also make unnecessary NEGATIVE comments about CSA and Bryce during his telecasts. We all know that Bill Walton is not mentally stable due to his experiments with drugs throughout his life, but enough is enough with bashing our coaching staff and criticizing Bryce and our players on National T.V.
I hope someone would remind his dead brain cells that other coaches including Sean Miller, coach K and John Calipari use his comments against UCLA to discourage the potential recruits from choosing UCLA.
I have been personally told by a recruits family that they did not like what Walton, who is a UCLA alumni and ex-baller had said about CSA and Bryce during a recent game.
Please let us know what your thoughts are about Walton and what should be done to inform him of the damage that he is causing to UCLA basketball program..
Go Bruins…..