TEMPE, Ariz. “”mdash; There were a number of plays the UCLA men’s basketball team could point to.
There were the three times the No. 11 Bruins’ four-point lead in the second half was trimmed to one by Arizona State’s 3-pointers.
There was the shot-clock violation called on the Bruins with 1:36 left in the game and UCLA up one.
There was the charging call on a Darren Collison layup that, if a block were called, would have given the Bruins a chance to move ahead by one with 39 seconds remaining.
In the end, all those plays, combined with an inability to stop a balanced offensive attack of the No. 18 Arizona State Sun Devils (19-5, 8-4 Pac-10), resulted in a discouraging 74-67 loss at a raucous Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe. With the loss, the Bruins (19-5, 8-3) failed to seize the opportunity to claim first place in the Pac-10 solely for themselves, falling a half a game behind Washington.
When the desperation shots ended for the Bruins, the Arizona State students rushed the floor in a frenzy, running and jumping in joy at mid-court at sweeping the season series against UCLA, with most of the 13,368 in attendance joining the celebration.
“Every loss hurts,” said senior guard Josh Shipp, who finished the game with a team-high 16 points. “That just shows how good of a team we are if the other team gets so excited when they beat us.”
Arizona State shot 60 percent from the field Thursday, including 61.1 percent from beyond the 3-point arc. While the Bruins shot a respectable 49 percent themselves, coach Ben Howland said it was the balance the Sun Devils showed on offense that proved critical.
Five Arizona State players, including James Harden, who led team with 15, scored in double figures.
“Just putting the ball in the basket allowed us to stay in the game tonight,” Arizona State coach Herb Sendek said. “We did it with balance.”
At the start of the game, it was the Bruins that beat themselves, choosing to pass the ball around the perimeter and finding themselves down 24-12 with 9:37 left in the half.
Yet that’s when the Bruin play of the past two weeks began to show itself, as the Bruins forced eight turnovers en route to 23-11 run to end the half. UCLA went into halftime tied 35-35 on a last second 3-point shot by junior guard Michael Roll.
“They slow the game down a lot,” said Roll, who finished with 15 points. “Their zone obviously does that. I mean as soon as the game started, we had trouble figuring it out but once we did things were a little bit easier.”
In the second half, the two teams found themselves in a game of tug-of-war for the lead and momentum, with the lead changing 10 times and the score tied three times in the half.
Six times in the half UCLA was up by four, but never broke open the game.
Up by one, 67-66, with 1:36 left, the Bruins could not get a shot off before the 35-second shot clock expired. The next possession, Derek Glasser hit a 3-point shot off a Harden pass to give the Sun Devils a 69-67 lead.
“That was just an inability to know the shot clock,” Howland said.
Then came the controversial play of the night. With 39 seconds remaining down 69-67, Collison drove to the basket for a lay-up and was called for a charge, erasing the tying basket and denying the Bruins an opportunity to tie the game.
“I thought it was a block, because the guy was moving,” Howland said.
Said Collison: “They made the call, it is what it is. Like I said, we can’t really worry about it.”
On a night in which their four-game winning streak came to a halt, the Bruins were left shaking their heads.
“It really hurts,” Roll said. “It would have been a big win for us on the road, kept us in first place by ourselves. Now we’re back battling with the rest of the conference. It just sucks.”