The first-ever conference road sweep for coach Steve Alford and the No. 4 Bruins (18-1, 5-1 Pac-12) wasn’t won because of their offense.
Defense won the game and stopped Utah (12-5, 3-2 Pac-12) from snatching Saturday afternoon’s contest away from UCLA men’s basketball.
[Related: UCLA escapes with a one-point win over Utah]
The Bruins have just one loss all season, where the defense faltered against then-No. 21 Oregon, and junior Duck Dillon Brooks was able to snare the rebound off Bruin Bryce Alford’s missed free throw to hit the game-winning three-pointer.
Even on the bench in the final seconds, the senior guard was having flashbacks of the lone blemish on UCLA’s season.
“This game almost had flashes of Oregon,” Alford said. “When this shot went up, I was just saying ‘don’t go in, don’t go in.’
[Related: Bruins’ defense starts slow and falters in loss to Oregon]
This time, it didn’t go in.
Freshman forward TJ Leaf contested Kyle Kuzma’s long shot and junior center Thomas Welsh grabbed the defensive rebound before knocking down two free throws to seal the game for the Bruins.
“That’s growth,” said freshman guard Lonzo Ball, who had a game-high 17 points and five steals. “We’ve been talking about it all year and we finally pulled it out with a stop to win the game.”
Utah outshot, out-rebounded and had better ball movement than UCLA, but down the stretch of the second half, the Bruins were the ones with the better defensive game plan.
With 12 seconds left, the defensive stand started with fouling the Utes to disrupt them as they inbounded the ball.
“When you have fouls to give, instead of guarding for 15, 16 seconds, you reduce it to five,” Steve Alford said. “We made the right plays. This isn’t easy. We didn’t shoot the ball particularly well, but we found a way to win.”
Three fouls later, Utah had just five seconds to hoist up a shot that ended up bouncing off the rim.
Welsh grabbed that critical rebound, one of his eight on the night before he was fouled.
“They gave the ball to their best player and he had a pretty good shot at it, but we made some smart plays at the end, especially with the fouls at the end,” Welsh said. “It was huge to give them that much less time because they weren’t able to run a play. All they could do was get the ball in and get a shot up so I think it was big.”
Welsh’s free throws made it a three-point game with 0.8 seconds left.
The Utes had just enough time to toss the ball across the court for Lorenzo Bonam’s two-point buzzer-beater.
But it was not enough.
The UCLA defense had already won the game.