On UCLA’s second to last possession, after Texas A&M’s Donald Sloan had tied the game at 49 with a jumper with 43 seconds left in the game, Darren Collison took the ball past mid-court, then dribbled left and waited as time ran off the clock.
Russell Westbrook and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute waited on the left wing, while Josh Shipp stood on the right. Kevin Love was near the basket.
As the shot clock wound down around 10 seconds, Westbrook began waving his arm toward Love and Shipp. No one moved. A few more seconds passed, and Westbrook waved more frantically. Love came up to set a high screen, and Collison drove right and banked in the game winning layup.
The play worked, but it also underscored a major problem the Bruins’ offense had all game: It relied almost entirely on Collison and Love.
Collison, a junior guard, and Love, a freshman center, combined to score 40 of the Bruins’ 53 points, including eight of UCLA’s final 10. As a pair, the two shot 14-of-25 from the field and were 6-of-7 from the foul line. By comparison, the rest of the Bruins shot only 6-of-20 from the field, and 1-of-4 from the foul line.
“To win, with those (other) guys not having their best offensive game, is a great testament to this team and the way they find a way to win,” coach Ben Howland said.
Down the stretch that meant Love and Collison, and after the game Howland admitted that most of the plays being called were run through the two of them. But he was also quick to point out that that was not a result of the fact that other Bruins’ were struggling to score.
“We want to get the ball to Kevin because he makes his foul shots – he’s our leading scorer – and Darren, the way (the Aggies) were playing him, we want to go to those two guys,” Howland said. “Those are two of our best players, so it makes sense to run sets or plays to get them opportunities.”
Still, on Saturday it wasn’t clear if UCLA had any other option. Shipp missed all four shots he took and finished scoreless, Mbah a Moute looked tentative in his first game back from an ankle injury and went 1-for-4, and Westbrook had only seven points, two of which came on an impressive ““ though unimportant ““ last-second dunk.
While Texas A&M deserves credit for the job it did on defense, the Bruins’ inability to find consistent third and fourth options on offense is something that has to concern them as they look ahead to the rest of the tournament.
“They’re a great team, they played great defense, but a lot of that is just me missing shots,” Shipp said. “I had the open looks; they’re just not going down.”
Even though the Bruins’ offense seemed only two-dimensional at times, the rest of the team did make its standard defensive contributions, highlighted by Shipp’s block of Sloan on the Aggies’ final possession, which led to Westbrook’s emphatic slam.
“I’m not worried about (the offense),” Collison said. “Those guys did a lot of other things that helped us win the game. They’re going to come along; everybody goes through those times. When they start knocking down shots, we’re a tough team to guard.”
So while on Saturday UCLA’s offense looked alarmingly stagnant at times, during a time of the year when the main goal is to survive and advance, the Bruins weren’t going to complain about winning when most of them weren’t knocking down many of those shots.
“It’s the best zero-point game for me ever,” Shipp said.