Bruins save their best for last

BERKELEY “”mdash; Forty minutes simply weren’t enough.

Arron Afflalo needed more time to continue one of the best
stretches of basketball of his career.

Jordan Farmar needed more time to halt one of the worst
stretches of basketball of his career.

UCLA needed more time to stake its claim to at least a share of
the Pac-10 title.

Unlike the first half, the Bruins didn’t let the extra
time go to waste.

Playing in its first overtime of the season, UCLA scored the
final 12 points in the extra session to secure a 67-58 overtime
victory over Cal at Haas Pavilion on Thursday. With the win, the
Bruins clinched at least a share of the Pac-10 title for the first
time since the 1996-1997 season and earned one of the top two seeds
for next week’s Pac-10 Tournament.

As he dribbled out the clock, Afflalo, whose 21-point scoring
outburst after halftime brought the Bruins back from an 11-point
deficit, couldn’t help but soak in his biggest win at UCLA
with his biggest smile of the season.

“We’re going to celebrate it for a few hours,”
said Afflalo, who led all scorers with 25 points and pulled down a
team-high seven rebounds. “Right now, we’re co-Pac-10
champs. We want to enjoy this bus ride, and we want to enjoy
tonight. But we want to be Pac-10 champions (outright).”

That’s a title no longer potentially reserved for Cal
(17-9, 11-6 Pac-10), whose last conference crown came all the way
back in 1960. Only Washington can catch UCLA (23-6, 13-4) for a
share of the Pac-10 title, but the Huskies would need to beat
Arizona on Saturday and need the Bruins to lose at Stanford to
claim a tie.

“This win wasn’t the end of the world if we lost,
but I thought (before the game) it sure would have been nice to win
that game,” Howland said. “To go through all of that,
to have to go to overtime, this is a testament to these kids’
character. I’m just really proud of them.

“These guys never quit. They never say die.”

Those words certainly applied to Afflalo, who carried the Bruins
back from their first-half malaise.

UCLA trailed going into the locker room at halftime for the
fifth consecutive game. Its offense was once again stagnant,
scoring a season-low 20 first-half points.

Its defense was penetrable, allowing Cal to shoot 56.3 percent
from the floor and Bears’ power forward Leon Powe to score 15
first-half points.

Their passion and pride, according to Afflalo, was left in the
locker room.

With the Pac-10 title possibly on the line, the Bruins needed
somebody to do something about it.

“It just happened to be me tonight,” Afflalo
said.

“What a warrior,” said Howland, describing
Afflalo.

Even with Farmar struggling through one of his worst games of
the season, making only one of nine shots and scoring two points in
regulation, Afflalo’s offensive explosion was more than
enough to compensate.

Afflalo scored 21 points after halftime, going 7-for-11 from the
field and draining five 3-pointers, each more important than its
predecessor.

The Bruin sophomore was quick to note after the game that it
wasn’t his offensive surge that qualified his performance as
the best of his career. He instead attributed it to the magnitude
of Thursday’s game.

“Because of the fact that it was the biggest game of my
UCLA career thus far, I would have to say that (it was my best
half),” Afflalo said.

Senior and roommate Cedric Bozeman agreed.

“As of right now, with this on the line tonight and with
this magnitude, this is his best,” Bozeman said. “The
best I’ve seen him play in a long time.”

While Farmar struggled for the first 40 minutes, missing a
potential game-winning shot at the end of regulation after
Cal’s Theo Robertson tied the game at 55-55 with a 3-pointer
with 27.7 seconds left, he still found a way to make an impact in
overtime.

The UCLA point guard scored six points in overtime, none more
important than a difficult pull-up bank shot to give the Bruins a
63-58 lead.

It was difficult after the basket to remember Cal had scored
only 26 seconds into overtime on Ayinde Ubaka’s 3-pointer to
take a 58-55 lead. The Bears didn’t score again.

In a rare display of emotion, senior Cedric Bozeman,
all-too-present for when the program was in the doldrums, finally
found it opportune to release the most emotion he’s exhibited
all season.

He pumped his fist for the final 25 seconds, each fist pump
containing a bit more meaning than the one before it.

“It was a release because I bottle all of that stuff in.
But man, we finally got to see the finished product,” Bozeman
said. “To work that hard for three years to get to this
point, it’s gratifying. I’ve seen a lot of ups and
downs.

“This is definitely sweet.”

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