When the No. 20 UCLA women’s basketball team plays California Friday in Pauley Pavilion, it won’t be like the first time time the teams played this season. Not many games, at any level of basketball, will be much like that first matchup.
The December game ended in a double overtime 108-104 loss for the Bruins, in what was their wildest game so far this season. The Golden Bears jumped out to a 16 point lead in the first half that they steadily clung to for the majority of the second. The Bruins rallied at the end, eventually overcoming an eight-point deficit with under a minute remaining.
Sophomore guard Jordin Canada capped off the absurd comeback by hitting a pull-up 3-pointer to send the game into the first overtime. It was a shot that established UCLA as a resilient team and Canada as one of the Pac-12’s best point guards.
“The original plan was to go to (junior guard Kari) Korver off the flare screen. I was just playing basketball, reading it, knew that they were going to overplay her because she’s the best shooter on the team,” Canada said. “I just knew that we only had three seconds left and if she wasn’t open I’d have to take the shot, and, you know, luckily I made it.”
Though Cal (10-7, 1-5 Pac-12) would prevail in the second overtime, the game easily could have gone UCLA’s (12-5, 4-2) way. The Bruins were down by double digits for long stretches of the game and had to play catch-up in the third quarter, when they generally look to stretch their leads. Their inability to stop the Golden Bears in the first half made their late comeback necessary, and considering the final score, largely irrelevant.
“The biggest thing is just taking into consideration how important defense and rebounding is,” said assistant coach Jenny Huth. “When you lose to a team and they score 108 points, you gotta figure out that there’s something not right there, so we’ve reevaluated what that looks like.”
The other problem that the Bruins must correct is stopping Cal’s freshman forward/center Kristine Anigwe. The 6-foot-4 forward hurt UCLA down the stretch by hitting critical shots that kept the Bruins from closing the gap sooner, eventually finishing with 25 points.
“I think we did well fighting at the end but we struggled with our defense taking away what we knew they’d go to, like going to Anigwe or (sophomore forward Mikayla) Cowling. We knew that at the end they would make tough shots and we didn’t take that away,” said senior forward Kacy Swain.
Stopping Anigwe will be a difficult task for the Bruins. She has been awarded Pac-12 Freshman of the Week seven times already this season and is a likely contender for All-Conference honors.
“She’s really skilled. She’s an extremely skilled player,” Huth said. “She’s one of those players that understands the whole scheme of a play, so she knows timing of when to post up, how to post up with her body in position, so she does that exceptionally well. She does what she does exceptionally well.”
Since that game, both teams have have slowed down a bit. Cal plummeted, going one and five in their first six conference games, and UCLA has lost two of their last three. What hasn’t diminished is how intense that game was, and the energy that both teams are expected to come out with because of it.
LAST WEEK: UCLA’s weekend split in Washington.
“There’s a lot of pent up emotion behind it and, and we’re just going to come out with defense and rebounding and just playing hard,” Swain said.
UCLA will hope to carry its momentum from the Cal game into their matchup with No. 12 Stanford in Pauley Pavilion Sunday.