SAN ANTONIO “”mdash; A look of helplessness took over Kevin Love’s face as he glanced up at the scoreboard to see UCLA in an insurmountable deficit with little time left on the clock.
The freshman phenom, who was seen by many as the missing piece of a championship team, was neutralized by Memphis’ big men in Saturday’s 78-63 loss.
“They did a good job of scheming to try to keep (the ball) out of his hands as much as possible,” UCLA coach Ben Howland said.
After a successful first half in which Love was able to tally 10 points and grab six rebounds, the Tiger defense quickly began to pounce on the Bruin center, double-teaming him and preventing him from getting to the glass for rebounds.
“We came in with the game plan to try to disrupt him more than stop him because he can hurt you from a lot of different areas on the floor,” Memphis junior guard Chris Douglas-Roberts said.
“So we just wanted to make it difficult for him on his catches. We ran some doubles at him. We tried to go on the dribble. We did a fairly good job of stopping what he wanted to do,” Douglas-Roberts added.
To add to Love’s frustration, guards Darren Collison and Russell Westbrook had a difficult time feeding the ball into the low post, forcing him to settle for two 3-pointers, both of which rattled in and out.
“It was a tough game for me,” Love said.
“They kept doubling me inside and tried to take me out of my game as best they could.”
At the onset of the second half, it appeared that the Bruins might be able to begin attacking the paint again, as both Joey Dorsey and Shawn Taggart picked up their third fouls within the first minute of play.
For the next four minutes, with Dorsey on the bench, the Bruins were unable to chip into a seven-point deficit.
They were still unable to feed the ball inside to Love.
“We struggled a little bit getting the ball to Kevin,” junior forward Josh Shipp said.
“At the end of the day, their post players did a great job of denying him the ball,” he added.
And it didn’t help Love that the Tigers kept running at such a fast-paced tempo, making the most off of UCLA’s missed opportunities and turnovers, scoring 21 points in such situations.
At times, Love said he was unable to even make it past half court before either Derrick Rose or Douglas-Roberts had led a fast break for a Memphis score, and the Bruin freshman was visibly drained.
“In the second half we was just trying to push it and just make smart plays,” Rose said.
“If we didn’t have the shot, just come out and run a set so they could come around and play defense a little bit longer. That was all we was trying to do.”
With one minute remaining in the game, Love fought hard to hold back his emotions as he saw his final game of the season, and perhaps of his UCLA career, come to an end.
Though he declined to speculate about his plans for the future and whether or not he would declare for the NBA Draft, Love did say that he was still a UCLA Bruin and planned on attending class today ““ the day on which he would have liked to lead his team to a national championship.
“I’ll step back and go home and talk to a few people and to my family and see what my options are,” Love said.
“I’m still young. I still have a lot to work on. We’ll see what happens.”