PULLMAN, Wash. “”mdash; It was almost deja vu all over again for the Bruins at Washington State Thursday night. Almost.
After coughing up an 11-point lead with eight minutes to go, UCLA was staring down the barrel of another blown victory.
But this time around, senior guard Darren Collison would have none of it.
In the final five minutes, Collison took over, leading the Bruins (15-3, 5-1 Pac-10) to a 61-59 win over the Cougars (11-7, 3-3 Pac-10) at a raucous Beasley Coliseum.
“We didn’t want the feeling from the (Arizona State) loss to happen again,” Collison said. “I wasn’t going to lose this game.”
In almost the exact same fashion of the Bruins’ collapse against ASU last week, UCLA’s offense sputtered to a halt with 8:12 left in the second half. Although they had been hitting outside shots all night, they stopped falling.
“We were really impatient at times offensively,” coach Ben Howland said. “We need to have a little more patience when we have a lead. But overall, I knew it was going to be a hard game. I’m not surprised at all.”
It took exactly three minutes for the Cougars ““ who shot 64 percent in the second half ““ to wipe away an 11-point deficit, aided by a Bruin offense that could not score. But with the game tied at 53 with less than five minutes remaining, Collison took charge.
“You can’t lose your poise in that type of atmosphere,” Collison said. “The minute you lose your poise it’s going to be over.”
He drove into the paint, took a foul in traffic and sank both free throws to put the Bruins back on top. For the next two possessions, it was the same story.
Collison cleared out the paint with the help of a high screen by senior forward Alfred Aboya then hit a twisting layup around 6-foot-10-inch center Aron Baynes. The next time down the court, Collison held the ball until there were 10 seconds left on the shot clock, stutter-stepped into the lane using another Aboya screen, hesitated, then popped a 10-foot floater over Baynes to put the Bruins up four. Those two baskets were the only two shots from the field that the Bruins made in the final eight minutes.
And in three possessions, Collison posted six of his eight points and a lead the Bruins would not relinquish.
“Darren really looked to be more aggressive finally at the end of the game getting to the basket,” Howland said.
Collison’s decision-making in the final minutes was nothing the Bruins discussed in the huddle but rather it was the team leader forcing the action.
“He knows by now, after four years, what he’s supposed to do at the end of games,” Howland said. “And that’s what he did.”
By attacking the basket, Collison put the game on his shoulders, making a statement that nobody else was going to decide the game except him. As opposed to last week, this time around Collison would not be denied.
It was an effort that caught the eye of WSU coach Tony Bennett.
“He’s special late in the game, one of the best there is,” Bennett said. “We worked as hard as we could to pinch it and not let him get in (the paint). He made some plays.”
Despite Collison’s performance down the stretch, the Bruins still could not close it out offensively. Collison missed a three-pointer with 1:20 remaining, then junior forward Nikola Dragovic did the same, leaving UCLA up 61-59 with 20 seconds on the clock.
“We knew they were going to make a run,” Howland said. “Every time we play Washington State, it comes down to tough possessions down the stretch.”
The Cougars grabbed Dragovic’s miss and got the ball to senior Caleb Forrest about 15 feet from the hoop. At that point Forrest was 8-for-9 from the field with 19 points. He hoisted up a shot over Dragovic with four seconds left that went in and would have sent the game into overtime, but it didn’t count. Bennett had called a time-out from the bench a split second before it left his hands.
After the time-out, the Bruins looked for WSU to run either a lob play to Baynes or a three-point attempt by the in-bounder, but they ran neither. Instead freshman Marcus Capers threw up a prayer at the buzzer that clanged off the rim, letting the Bruins breathe easy for one more night.