Washington State came to Westwood on Saturday with one win ever at Pauley Pavilion.
Nobody south of Pullman expected that to change this weekend. But the Bruins (20-7, 9-5 Pac-10) allowed the Cougars to shoot 58.8 percent from the floor and put up a season-high in points en route to an 82-81 shocker, dropping UCLA into a third-place tie in the Pac-10. Coach Ben Howland pointed to UCLA’s ineffective pressure defense as the reason for the meltdown.
“The way we’ve been successful in the past three or four years is by playing good defense,” Howland said. “And our defense was really, really not good today.”
The Cougars (14-13, 6-9) got off to a fast start, pushing their lead to as many as eight in the first half. The Bruins posted a 9-4 run coming out of the break, but lost any sense of tempo on offense for the next nine minutes of the second half. That stretch allowed Washington to open up an eight-point lead from which the Bruins could not recover.
“We did not do a good job of being mentally ready to understand what kind of game this was going to be,” Howland said.
Though the Bruins’ full-court pressure defense in the final minutes was effective in forcing turnovers and harassing the Cougars, UCLA failed to capitalize when it counted.
With just over two minutes remaining and down five, UCLA’s pressure forced a turnover in the WSU backcourt. Senior guard Josh Shipp had the chance at an uncontested layup, but it clanged off the rim. Senior center Alfred Aboya missed the put-back in traffic, creating an opportunity for a Cougar 3-on-1 fast break.
Washington senior point guard Taylor Rochestie elected to pull up for 3 instead of drive to the hoop, and he nailed it ““ leaving the crowd gasping and the Bruins in an eight-point hole. UCLA might have been able to overcome the deficit, but Rochestie just would not allow it. He torched the Bruins all afternoon with a career-high 33 points and put up 13 of the Cougars’ final 14 points. Rochestie, a Santa Barbara native who Howland described as a “fifth-year senior that nobody wanted” coming out of high school, went 5-7 from downtown and drained all 10 of his free-throw attempts.
“He had a heck of a game,” senior point guard Darren Collison said.
The Bruins still had a chance to win after a deep trey by junior forward Nikola Dragovic pulled the Bruins to within one with just five seconds on the clock. But after a pair of missed free throws by Washington, Shipp’s half-court Hail Mary as time expired was blocked and fell harmlessly to the floor.
“I should’ve just caught it and shot it, but I took a dribble,” Shipp said. “I thought I had more time to get a better shot.”
Howland’s assessment of the Bruins’ porous defense was evident early on in the first half. Bruin freshman guard Jrue Holiday struggled to contain freshman wing Klay Thompson, who posted 13 points in the first 10 minutes of play. Instead of trailing Thompson on ball screens, Holiday got caught running under screens, leaving a cushion for the shooter to hit a number of deep jumpers.
Howland pulled Holiday for freshman guard Malcolm Lee, who saw a conference-season high of 16 minutes. Lee started the second half and helped limit Thompson to only two points after Howland made the switch.
“Malcolm came in and did a much better job defensively than anybody else matched up on Thompson,” Howland said.
“We’re going to have to look to play him more. He’s our best defensive wing right now, based on today.”
The 6-foot, 5-inch Lee used his size to effectively shut out Thompson for the final 20 minutes. But the Cougars already had the spark they needed.
“In the first two minutes, we made a lot of defensive mistakes and they just carried over,” Collison said.
Those mistakes included taking bad angles on defensive double teams, resulting in several easy close-range buckets, Howland said.
“We need defense,” Howland said. “Defense is going to be a priority here. We’re going to have to have more of a sense of urgency defensively with every possession.”
The loss left Howland and the Bruins struggling to understand what caused the defensive collapse, giving up a season-high 82 points to a team that now averages only 55.1 per game away from home.
“Today we just had a lack of effort,” Shipp said. “We didn’t trail guys, we didn’t extend, we didn’t bump. We didn’t do the things we normally do. And you saw what happened.
“We got a lot of young guys that are still gelling, so sometimes we don’t know if the intensity’s going to come out. But at the end of the day, we got to know what we’re fighting for here. We’re fighting for a championship. We got to come with that effort every game.”