As far as enigmas go, the UCLA men’s basketball team takes the prize.
One day, the Bruins take the floor and prove that they have enough talent to compete for the Pac-10 Conference’s automatic NCAA tournament bid.
Another day is another story, with UCLA seemingly exposing its inexperience and inability to close out its opponent.
The latter happened Saturday in UCLA’s 72-58 loss to California at Pauley Pavilion.
The Bruins ran out to a 14-point lead midway through the first half then all but ran themselves out of an opportunity to remain atop the conference standings.
“They just outmanned us,” said senior guard Michael Roll, who scored a game-high 22 points on 9-for-14 shooting.
Roll nailed UCLA’s four 3-pointers and dished out four assists.
But he didn’t have much of a supporting cast, with the rest of the team shooting a meager 12-for-30.
Senior forward Nikola Dragovic missed seven of his eight shots, including all four from 3-point range. Five of his seven points came on free throws. His minutes diminished down the stretch once Howland decided to play a pressing defense.
“He’s a shooter,” Roll said. “I can’t say why he missed shots. I don’t know.”
Freshman forward Reeves Nelson was off too, scoring just six points in 20 minutes. He suffered a concussion in the early minutes, but he said he stayed in the game by lying to team trainers.
In all actuality, UCLA couldn’t have started the game any better.
The Bruins stormed out to an early 22-8 advantage that spurred two standing ovations from the 10,450 in attendance.
UCLA (11-12, 6-5 Pac-10) suddenly hit a wall, failing to knock down a field goal in the final 6:56 of the period.
Cal altered its defensive approach, and UCLA struggled to adjust.
“We ended up taking some bad shots, especially when the game got tight,” coach Ben Howland said.
Cal (15-8, 7-4) closed the half on an 18-2 run and went into the locker room with a seven-point lead. The Golden Bears scored eight unanswered points in the final two minutes of the half.
Leading the way was Theo Robertson, who scored 12 of his 20 points in the first half on five made field goals.
The other zone-buster was Patrick Christopher, who also finished with 20 points. Jerome Randle contributed 14 points, 12 of which came from well behind the 3-point line.
It was a far cry from Randle’s anemic 5-for-16 shooting performance in the teams’ previous meeting on Jan. 6 at Haas Pavilion ““ a game that UCLA won in overtime on a last-second jumper from Roll.
“Jerome Randle did a marvelous job in running the team,” Cal coach Mike Montgomery said. “He was patient and got guys in position to score.”
Cal shot a blistering 55 percent from the field, improving its record to 9-0 when making at least half of its field goals in a game.
The previous heartbreaking loss to UCLA, combined with Cal’s close defeat at the hands of USC two days before, were motivating factors, according to Montgomery.
“Before the game, we talked about what we had to do,” Montgomery said. “We had to play smart and make great decisions, and I felt like we largely did that this afternoon.”
UCLA’s deficit reached 12 before it cut it to three following a 10-2 run with more than 11 minutes remaining. But sophomore guard Malcolm Lee failed to get the Bruins within two with a missed free throw.
That’s as good a look as UCLA got.
“We made some runs in the second half, but we did a poor job of making our foul shots,” Howland said. “When we play a good team like that, you have to make your foul shouts.”
Cal closed the game on a 24-13 spurt to seal things up.
After giving the ball away just five times in a 77-73 win over Stanford on Thursday, UCLA committed 16 turnovers Saturday.
Just another step backward in a weekend that had begun on a promising note.
“It was disappointing that we fell back into that mode,” Howland said.
UCLA lost its third nationally televised game on CBS this season. The network had also broadcast the Bruins’ road loss to Notre Dame and home loss to Arizona.
UCLA had won four of its last five games but clearly did not look like a team that had done so. The Bruins moved into a five-way tie for second place.
“It could have set us apart from the other teams in the running for first place,” Lee said. “But hey, the game is over. We can’t let it affect us.”