PHILADELPHIA ““ For UCLA point guard Darren Collison, the biggest play of the season came down to one simple task.
With the UCLA men’s basketball team’s season left hanging on the brink by a suddenly surging Virginia Commonwealth team led by senior point guard Eric Maynor and backed by a mostly pro-VCU crowd, Collison did what UCLA coach Ben Howland has instructed him to do for the past four years ““ he played defense.
And it worked.
Maynor’s potential game-winning shot barely grazed the front of the rim, and Collison and the No. 6-seeded Bruins walked off the court rejoicing after a 65-64 win over the No. 11-seeded Rams in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at the Wachovia Center on Thursday.
“There’s a lot of times when you’re in that situation, you just got to play defense,” said Collison, who scored 10 points. “I’ve seen from former players when they’re in that situation. I wish I could tell you there’s a trick to what I did; I just played defense, and that was it pretty much.”
The Bruins advance to play No. 3-seeded Villanova on Saturday at 10:05 a.m.
Two years ago in the first round of the tournament, VCU pulled off an upset of Duke on a game-winning shot by Maynor. Yet, when faced with another opportunity to give VCU another upset win over a major college team in the tournament, Maynor ““ who scored a game-high 21 points ““ could not get it done.
Following the game, Collison said that because of the type of player Maynor is and the fact that he has one big-game winning shot under his belt, he was not surprised that the task of pulling off the upset fell to him.
“Everybody knew he was going to take that last shot,” Collison said. “It’s his team, there’s a lot of pressure on him to get the job done, and there’s a lot of pressure on myself to get a stop. Right there you just got to remember what coach taught you earlier in the year, what you’ve been taught all along: Just play solid defense.”
Senior forward Josh Shipp led the Bruins with 16 points, and freshman guard Jrue Holiday scored 13 points. Junior forward Nikola Dragovic recorded the first double-double of his career, scoring 10 points while pulling down a career-high 13 rebounds, a stat Howland thought was the most important of the night in terms of individual performance.
“That was huge, no question,” Howland said.
All the drama that occurred at the end of the game, with fans holding their breath as Maynor’s shot sailed through the air only to come up short, seemed like it would be unnecessary with as little as four minutes remaining in the game. With 4:02 left in the game, Holiday drove for a layup, putting the Bruins up by nine points at 61-52. Yet, eerily reminiscent of past losses this season to Arizona State and Washington, the UCLA offense suddenly went dry.
Led by key 3-point shots and free throws, along with a pressure-oriented defense that caused the Bruins to play faster than they like, the Rams went on a furious 12-3 run to pull within one point with 48 seconds left.
“I think we just dropped the intensity in the last five minutes,” Dragovic said. “We didn’t have the pressure that we had the first 35 minutes. We relaxed because we had the lead.”
Adding to the anxiety of the Bruins, Collison’s layup was blocked by Larry Sanders with 15.9 seconds remaining, which set the stage for the final play of the game.
“They never quit,” Shipp said. “They just kept fighting.”
In the first half, Collison and Holiday proved they were capable of containing Maynor, and they him to six points on 1-of-3 shooting. Yet, with an added emphasis to get to the line ““ Maynor attempted a game-high 13 free throws and made 10 of them ““ he became a much more potent offensive player.
“Darren did a terrific job defensively on him,” Howland said. “He’s a second-half guy and he got to the line. That’s what got him going.”
Much of the talk surrounding Collison this past week was how much his bruised tailbone would affect him. After a disappointing showing in the Bruins’ loss to USC in the Pac-10 Tournament, questions about his health seemed valid. But following Thursday’s game, Collison said his tailbone was fine and did not limit what he was able to do on the court.
Now the Bruins must look ahead to Saturday’s game against Villanova, in what will be a virtual home game for the Wildcats since they play some of their home games at the Wachovia Center. Yet the Bruins’ focus will not be on the crowd.
“It’s tough, but once you get on the floor you really don’t notice it,” Shipp said. “You’re putting all your effort into the game, so you really don’t pay attention to the crowd. At the end of the day, it’s always good to have that home crowd, but we didn’t have it this year. We’ve got to play somewhere and it’s here and it’s against us.”