BERKELEY “”mdash; For the sixth straight game, dejection
dominated the post-game mood in the UCLA locker room.
It’s becoming cliché to see the Bruins haplessly
allow their opponent to build an insurmountable lead. This time it
was Cal, opening the game up with a 25-9 run in the first 12
minutes to lead the Golden Bears to an 80-69 win in front of a
capacity crowd at Haas Pavilion.
“It’s becoming familiar,” guard Cedric Bozeman
said. “We are just not getting it done. I don’t know
what it is. We just have to figure it out.”
UCLA (4-11, 2-5 Pac-10) came out looking as flat as they have
all season.
Maybe they were still reeling from a tough one-point loss to
Stanford on Thursday, or maybe they were just dreading playing in a
place where they had gotten blown out the past two seasons.
Either way, the team shot only 25.9 percent from the field in
the first half, and only three players even had a field goal for
the team. The deficit at the break was 40-23, the largest halftime
lead for Cal (14-2, 7-0 Pac-10) this season.
“It was definitely whack. You could sense it in the first
minute or two,” said guard Ray Young, who finished 0-for-5
from the field. “We didn’t make any adjustments. We
couldn’t even play on defense, and forget the offense. We
were rusty.”
Cal forward Amit Tamir and center Gabriel Hughes dominated the
paint throughout the half, recording 10 rebounds and 22 points
between them.
Hughes had a monster block on a Bozeman five-footer that sent
the crowd into a frenzy as the scoreboard replayed it, dubbing it
the “block of the game” even though fewer than 20
minutes had expired.
“We dug ourselves a hole in the first 20 minutes,”
UCLA head coach Steve Lavin said. “We had a smaller lineup
in, and they were able to get 28 points in the paint in the first
half and take high percentage shots.”
Lavin credited the absence of forward Andre Patterson, who was
resting a sprained ankle, as the reason for UCLA’s lack of
inside presence.
Whatever it was, UCLA was finally able to pull it together at
the beginning of the second half.
The team made an early 9-0 run, including five points from
forward Dijon Thompson, to help cut the Cal lead to eight with 15
minutes remaining.
Little-used center Ryan Hollins came into the game right before
the run and put on his most impressive performance of the season,
recording four points on two dunks and grabbing three rebounds.
Forward Jason Kapono also came to life in the second half, going
6-for-9 from the field with four three-pointers. He finished with
23, his highest point total since scoring 44 at Washington State
Jan. 4.
But perhaps most impressive during the stretch was the
Bruins’ defensive press, which forced four turnovers in a
1-minute stretch during UCLA’s run.
“We put in a quicker team to try to press and come
back,” Lavin said.
But his plan only worked temporarily. Cal forward Joe Shipp led
his team on an 8-0 run to put the Golden Bears up 16. Shipp
finished with 23, and Cal never lost the double-digit lead after
that.
“You could see UCLA wasn’t playing as a team,”
said Shipp.
This is the first six-game losing streak for UCLA since the
1947-1948 season, when coincidentally the sixth and final loss came
at Cal.
It is also the first three-game winning streak for Cal over UCLA
since the Bruins lost their last two in 1994 and first in 1995.