Men’s basketball defeats USC, earns No. 4 seed in Pac-12

It was supposed to be Norman Powell’s night.

The UCLA senior guard, who earned a standing ovation before the game during the Senior Night ceremony, was playing in potentially his final game in Pauley Pavilion, coming off a career-high 28 points against Washington State Sunday and named Pac-12 Player of the Week Monday.

The stage was set for Powell to treat Bruin fans to an encore performance.

But when the game started, junior forward/center Tony Parker and sophomore guard Bryce Alford stole the show.

Parker scored 10 of the team’s first 15 points and Alford finished with 23 points on 7-10 shooting to propel UCLA past rival USC 85-74 in the its final regular season game. With the win, the Bruins clinched the No. 4 seed and a first round bye in next week’s Pac-12 tournament.

“(We’ve) still got work to do just like a lot of teams in the country,” said coach Steve Alford of UCLA’s NCAA tournament hopes. “You can’t stop, you got work to do. We feel like this team is playing better, it’s playing very good at the right time. It’s gonna be a competitive conference tournament.”

After a sluggish start against USC in which UCLA hit just one of its first four shots, Parker provided the spark and UCLA’s offense quickly caught fire. Parker scored 10 points in just over four minutes, turning a 4-2 UCLA deficit into a 15-12 lead.

Parker’s teammates followed his lead to fuel UCLA’s run, as Bryce Alford scored eight straight points, while freshman forward Kevon Looney and sophomore guard Isaac Hamilton added four and five points respectively.

“We just really got going,” Parker said. “I hit Kevon with a no-look pass, channeled my inner Steve Nash for a play or two, so that really got us going.”

However, it wasn’t until Parker left the floor – 11 minutes into the game – that Powell finally got on the board. Powell stripped the Trojan (11-19, 3-15 Pac-12) ball handler then raced down the court, finishing with Euro-step reverse layup to give the Bruins (19-12, 11-7) a 29-17 lead.

“It was real emotional and I feel like that carried over to the game a little bit and it was tough to get going at first, but we started playing basketball and it worked out,” said Powell, who finished with 12 points.

Still, as Parker’s production plateaued, it wasn’t Powell who carried the Bruins the rest of the half. Instead, Alford stayed hot, hitting five of six shots and scoring 15 points in the first half, which the Bruins ended with a 46-35 lead.

“It was just one of those nights where the basket feels like it’s really big,” Alford said.

USC still had life, though, actually outshooting and outrebounding UCLA in the first half despite the 11-point deficit.

In the second half, USC occasionally trimmed UCLA’s lead to single digits, but the Bruins held a comfortable lead throughout most of the second half.

Parker continued to do some heavy lifting in the second half, finishing with 22 points and seven rebounds – six of them on the offensive glass. He capped off his performance with pump fake from the 3-point line that drew a chorus of giggles from the crowd.

“I was really, really close (to shooting it), but I knew it was Senior Night, so I was gonna let a senior take that shot,” Parker said. “It was a good shot fake though. I think the crowd bit on it more than the ‘SC guys, though.”

With the win, UCLA finished conference play just one game behind where it was last year, but still finds itself on the bubble for an NCAA tournament bid. To tilt the fulcrum in their favor, the Bruins will need to make the most of the strong position they earned for themselves in next week’s Pac-12 tournament.

Their recent play has them confident they will do just that.

“We’re definitely gelling, we’re really getting going,” Parker said. “We’ve won three in a row, so it’s really big for us to keep it going, keep pushing, get it on a roll here because it’s do or die now.”