TEMPE, Ariz. ““ The UCLA men’s basketball team has got this routine down pat, the one that makes home fans go crazy for their team despite its disappointing pasts and bleak futures.
It’s too bad that the Bruins’ show caters exclusively to road audiences.
UCLA’s performance at Wells Fargo Arena on Saturday afternoon was inspiring, but only to the pro-Arizona State crowd who had the Bruins feeling once again like the uninvited guest at someone else’s party.
In their final game of the regular season ““ and Senior Day for their opponent ““ the Bruins (13-17, 8-10) never even shared a lead in their 56-46 loss.
This was the third straight week in which UCLA had watched a pregame ceremony honoring a team’s seniors and not one of them resulted in a win.
“It kind of sucks (because) you know they’re all fired up,” said senior guard Michael Roll, who lost his final game at Pauley Pavilion just last week. “Everyone wants to play well in their last game at home.”
Though the Bruins’ postseason chances have been diminishing for a while now, there was a lot riding on the game for the Sun Devils, and it showed.
In addition to honoring ASU’s three seniors with a pregame ceremony, the nationally-televised contest was an opportunity to help the Sun Devils’ NCAA Tournament profile. A win would give the school a shot to share its first ever Pac-10 title.
ASU senior center Eric Boateng certainly took those circumstances to heart.
With game-highs of 16 points and 14 rebounds, he was the undisputed star.
“Boateng was huge,” Roll said. “The last couple weeks he’s been a monster. He just had it going.”
The Sun Devils (22-9, 12-6) came out with a blazing start, shooting their way to a 13-0 lead after scoring on five of their first six possessions. The lead gave ASU plenty of wood to burn from there on out.
“Point blank, period, they just came out hitting shots,” UCLA sophomore guard Malcolm Lee said. “They still had the momentum through basically the whole first half.”
Lee and senior forward Nikola Dragovic each had 15 points, sharing the team lead as well as the burden of Michael Roll’s uncommonly poor shooting night.
The senior guard and team’s leading scorer was just 1-for-9 from the floor, missing all six of his shots from beyond the arc.
These were apparently not the same Bruins that shot a whopping 83 percent in the first half against the Sun Devils on New Year’s Eve to start the Pac-10 season.
Roll hit all of his four three-pointers in that game, which UCLA won 72-70.
Despite Saturday’s slow start, UCLA did manage to work its way back into the mix using back-to-back threes by Dragovic to bring the team within five.
“I thought that we showed some good character after dropping behind drastically “¦ to fight back and give ourselves a chance,” coach Ben Howland said.
But that was the closest the Bruins would get.
UCLA’s third straight loss was also its sixth defeat in the last eight tries and tied for its lowest scoring total all year.
For the Bruins, the game’s outcome had no impact on their ultimate fate, except for the possibility of providing a measure of hope for the postseason. UCLA will be awarded the fifth seed in next week’s Pac-10 Tournament, but anything short of winning that nine-team event will leave the Bruins home for their first free spring break since 2004.
Roll, the team’s only veteran of three Final Fours, laid out its future quite simply.
“It’s win or go home,” he said. “And I don’t want to go home.”