No matter what happens in Vegas, UCLA will assuredly stay in Vegas a day longer.
The Bruins erased a nine-point halftime deficit and sophomore guard Jordan Adams scored 24 points to give UCLA its first victory in three games, a 74-69 takedown of Oregon State.
While the Arizona Wildcats wrapped up the Pac-12 regular season title with a 79-66 win over Stanford in Tucson, Ariz., UCLA wrapped up a two-game losing streak at Pauley Pavilion Sunday.
In doing so, the Bruins assured the furthest they can fall in the next two games is fourth place in the conference standings, and clinched a first-round bye in the Pac-12 tournament.
But at halftime, trailing 38-29, it looked like UCLA was setting itself up for a Wednesday night, first-round showdown in Sin City in less than two weeks.
The Bruins gambled from deep, firing up quick jumpers, landing just one of their five three-point attempts and shooting just 37.9 percent from the field. They also let the Beavers (15-13, 7-9 Pac-12) go all-in inside the painted area, allowing 18 points that ballooned Oregon State’s first-half shooting margin to 56 percent.
Throughout the second half as well as at his post-game press conference, coach Steve Alford appeared to have been affected by UCLA’s desert of a first-half shooting performance, sporting just a shirt and tie and ditching his jacket.
“I’ve taken my jacket off not because of the storm but because it was a very interesting halftime,” Alford said. “I was not happy with our effort at all in the first half. We have not had very many first halves like that.”
The Bruins’ effort would return following the break, but what of Alford’s jacket?
“I like my clothing, so I didn’t throw it, I just hung it over a chair, so it’s not like it’s on the floor,” he said. “I think it came off before I got off the floor, to be honest with you.”
UCLA (22-7, 11-5) followed up its coach’s hardly-animated outrage with noted overall improvement in the second half. After trailing by as many as 11 points with 19:41 remaining, the Bruins managed better ball movement, giving sophomore guard Jordan Adams more room to work with offensively.
Over the next five-and-a-half minutes, UCLA embarked on an 18-6 run that finally put the Bruins ahead. Adams scored nine of his 20 second-half points during the stretch.
“They’re a pretty long and athletic team. We had to adjust to what they were doing and at halftime coach told us what he saw and we listened to him,” Adams said. “That eventually broke open the scoring margin.”
Adams played like a man with something to prove in the closing minutes of the game. Perhaps it was due to his Thursday absence, along with sophomore guard/forward Kyle Anderson, for a violation of team rules. While his team struggled against Oregon and came agonizingly close to making do without its two stars, Adams and Anderson were forced to sit on the bench and take it all in.
“We would like to apologize to our fans, our family, our coaching staff, our teammates for not playing that last game due to our issues,” Adams said. “We thank our teammates and all our fans that do support us.”
For others, like redshirt senior forwards David Wear and Travis Wear, as well as walk-on senior guard Aubrey Williams, Sunday’s game was more of a thank-you than an apology. The trio played their final game at Pauley Pavilion, with each Wear notching six points and Williams entering, to thunderous applause, for the final 13.5 seconds.
“You look back and reminisce on a lot of the games that you’ve played and it goes by real fast,” Travis Wear said. “From the journey we’ve had, we haven’t had a real consistent one but I couldn’t be happier to finish it this way.”