With the brush of a hand on an elbow, UCLA’s season almost went totally awry Thursday night.
Point guard Darren Collison, saddled with four fouls heading into the home stretch against the tough press of Western Kentucky, picked up his fifth on a cheap foul on a 3-point shot by the Hilltoppers’ Courtney Lee. While contesting the shot, Collison’s hand came in contact with Lee’s arm on his follow through, leaving the Bruins without their best ball handler with 5:39 to go in the game.
Without Collison, the Bruins were left with Josh Shipp and Russell Westbrook as their only real ball handlers against the intense defense of Western Kentucky. To make matters worse, both of them had four fouls as well.
The Bruins always seem to make the wins interesting.
Thanks to some late heroics from James Keefe, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute and Shipp, the Bruins escaped with a 88-78 victory in front of a mostly friendly crowd at U.S. Airways Arena.
“That was another exciting game for all the Bruins fans out there,” coach Ben Howland said. “I want to keep you guys awake and on the edge of your seat, so, you’re welcome.
“This is very typical of us. We like to make things exciting, you know, (to) make me lose hair.”
The Bruins nearly folded against the Hilltoppers’ press. After leading 41-20 at the half, the Bruins found themselves up by just four with 5:13 to go, thanks to the trapping, aggressive defense of the Hilltoppers.
The Hilltoppers were able to speed Collison, Westbrook and Shipp up in the second half by pressuring them from the inbounds and playing essentially inside the Bruins’ shirts. The Bruins turned the ball over 19 times and gave up 58 points in the half, a total that coach Ben Howland succinctly said he cannot remember a team of his giving up.
“I thought we got tentative instead of being attacking,” Howland said. “When we attacked we did a good job. It would have been a lot funner to actually have played as well as we did in the first half “¦ and had that kind of game going away.”
James Keefe managed to get to the line after getting battered down low and converted both free throws, extending the Bruins’ lead back to six.
Then Shipp, who’s been struggling from 3-point range since midway through the Pac-10 season, hit a contested 3-point jumper with the shot clock expiring that put the Bruins up 68-59 with a little under 4 minutes to go.
“It was big,” Shipp said. “It definitely felt good to knock that one down. I saw that the shot clock was going down and I went to shoot the ball. I went and got it, and it went down for me.”
Though the Bruins continued to make it interesting as the Hilltoppers knocked down 3 after 3, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute hit three key free throws down the stretch to help ice the game.
One theme among the Bruins in the locker room, besides relief, was that they thought they let off the gas in the second half, and the point disparity supports that: in the first half, just 20 points for Western Kentucky; in the second half, 58.
“You can definitely see that in how we played in the second half,” power forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute said. “We didn’t come out like we did in the first (half).”
But it wasn’t all UCLA’s effort. In the first half, the Hilltoppers did not press to anywhere near the extent they pressed in the second, though given UCLA’s guard situation, with only three real ball handlers in the regular rotation, it may have been prudent to start earlier.
“We dug ourselves too big a hole,” Hilltopper coach Darrin Horn said. “I blame myself for that a little bit. I think that maybe we could have or should have pressed more in the first half to try to create some tempo.”