This one just wasn’t fun to watch.
Now, I was a little distracted by Washington’s Ryan Appleby. He might be the goofiest basketball player I’ve seen in the Pac-10 since Brian Scalabrine.
I did see most of the Bruins’ sluggish game Sunday afternoon in Seattle as they dropped a 71-61 contest to a Washington team that had lost four straight.
I can’t pin this loss on one particular Bruin flaw; there were too many. The Bruins’ bench play was horrible. They committed 16 turnovers and 22 fouls. And, worst of all, they couldn’t hit a 3-pointer; they tried 16 and made only one.
The individual performances were equally lackluster.
Kevin Love turned in a double-double, but he was not as dominant as he has been the past two weekends against the Arizona and Oregon schools. It should be said, though, that Washington’s Jonathan Brockman is one of the few players in college basketball who can match up with Love physically. Brockman had 17 boards to prove as much Sunday.
So maybe there’s an explanation for Love’s tired performance.
But I’m still scratching my head about Darren Collison.
Collison, or, as we call him around here, “The Capital,” made just one field goal attempt in 37 minutes on the floor. Sometimes Collison falls into the role of facilitator for much of the game and then scores in a flurry.
This time, he didn’t facilitate or score. He turned the ball over eight times and had just four assists.
What’s even crazier is that Collison couldn’t stop Washington’s notoriously inconsistent point guard, Justin Dentmon.
Until Sunday, Dentmon hadn’t scored more than 10 points against a Pac-10 opponent. He dropped 20 on the Bruins to lead Washington to a much-needed win.
The Bruins’ scoring came mostly from their two players who create their own shots: Russell Westbrook and Josh Shipp. The two often wind up with the ball when the offense sputters, and boy did it break down Sunday. Combined, Westbrook and Shipp jacked up 34 shots. The rest of the team attempted only 27.
A friend of mine told me that Westbrook reminds him of NBA star Monta Ellis.
I always shy away from comparing Bruins to pro players because Howland’s style is so different from what NBA teams employ.
But Westbrook did look like an NBA player Sunday. He took more shots (16) than ever before in his Bruin career, and the results weren’t that bad. He also got to the line a lot and made all eight of his free throws.
Hopefully that will suffice as a silver-lining because I can’t think of any more positives about the actual game.
The big picture isn’t as gloomy. Remember, the Bruins lost at Washington in each of the last two seasons, when they reached the Final Four.
I think this loss says more about the challenge of the Pac-10 schedule than a dramatic slip in the Bruins’ play. Ben Howland has been asking his top players to play heavy minutes, and these long road trips are draining. This is a bad loss (Washington is No. 129 in the RPI), but in a way it’s understandable.
And now, thanks to this loss, the Pac-10 race gets interesting.
The Bruins are in a first-place tie with red-hot Stanford with seven more games left in the season.
For the Bruins, those seven games include a showdown with USC next Sunday and a meeting with Stanford at home on the last weekend of the season.
Those ones should be fun to watch.
If you’re a Brian Scalabrine fan, e-mail Allen at sallen@media.ucla.edu.