Heading into its first round NCAA Tournament game, top-seeded UCLA was trying to avoid making history. No 1-seed has ever lost to a 16-seed, and the Bruins didn’t want to be the first.
By the end of the night, the Bruins had helped make a very different kind of history.
UCLA (32-3) routed Mississippi Valley State (17-16) 70-29 at the Honda Center on Thursday, in a game in which they never trailed. The 29 points scored by the Delta Devils was the lowest total in a NCAA Tournament game since college basketball began using a shot clock in 1985.
The Bruins will advance to play ninth-seeded Texas A&M on Saturday. The Aggies defeated eighth-seeded BYU 67-62 earlier Thursday night.
The Delta Devils looked overmatched by the Bruins from the opening tip. UCLA opened the game on a 26-6 run, putting the contest well out of Mississippi Valley State’s reach by midway through the first half.
“It was a lot of fun,” freshman center Kevin Love said. “We had mentioned a couple of times throughout the week that a 16-seed had never beaten a 1-seed, and we didn’t want to be the first ones. So we just had to come out and jump on them as much as possible, and I felt like we did that.”
Love was particularly dominant against the undersized Delta Devils, finishing with 20 points and 9 rebounds in only 21 minutes. By halftime Love had 18 of the Bruins’ 40, more than the 16 scored by the entire Mississippi Valley State team.
Evidently Love’s back, which he strained in the opening minute of the Pac-10 Tournament championship game, isn’t bothering him very much.
“As of right now, it feels fine,” Love said. “It feels 95, 100 percent.”
The Bruins’ dominating performance was keyed in large part by their defense. They had 6 blocked shots in the first five minutes and finished with 13 overall, one shy of tying the record for a single NCAA Tournament game. UCLA also held Mississippi Valley State to just 19.7 percent shooting from the field and 7.1 percent from 3-point range.
“We just come out and play hard, no matter who we’re playing,” senior center Lorenzo Mata-Real said. “We don’t take anybody lightly. Our defense dictates what we do.”
While junior guard Darren Collison did admit after the game that it can be difficult to maintain focus with such a large lead, the Delta Devils’ offense was actually even more ineffective in the second half, scoring fewer points (13) and shooting even more poorly (5-of-30 from the field).
That’s impressive, given that coach Ben Howland pulled his starters from the game midway through the half and played reserves the rest of the way.
“No mercy. That’s all I can really say,” Love said. “We didn’t feel too bad for (Mississippi Valley State).”
Still, UCLA’s starters did manage to make at least one spectacular play in their limited second-half playing time.
Just over five minutes into the half, Collison dove underneath Mississippi Valley State forward Carl Lucas to tip the ball away. Junior swingman Josh Shipp managed to save the ball from going out of bounds between his legs and passed it down the court. Sophomore guard Russell Westbrook got the ball on the ensuing fast break, and he found sophomore guard James Keefe, who was wide open for a two-handed dunk that stretched the Bruins’ lead to 50-19.
While those individual points didn’t turn out to be terribly important, the team effort that produced them ““ so late in a blowout ““ may serve the Bruins well as they move deeper into the NCAA Tournament and closer to the kind of history they do want to make.
“You want to think of the ultimate goal,” Collison said. “The ultimate goal is to win a championship, and I thought we did a good job of not letting it down.”