If the Bruins keep playing like they did on Thursday, the 100-point mark and free Chipotle burritos for the students might be a real possibility.
Fresh off their convincing victory over Arizona on Saturday, the No. 4 Bruins rode on the backs of Josh Shipp and Lorenzo Mata en route to a Pac-10 season-high 85 points in their 85-75 victory over Cal (14-13, 6-9 Pac-10) at Pauley Pavilion.
Shipp led the Bruins (24-3, 13-2) with 22 points and a career-high six assists, while Mata entertained the crowd with his sharp foul shooting, finishing an incredible 8-for-9 from the line.
“Josh had a great effort out there for us,” coach Ben Howland said. “When Josh is playing well, and Lorenzo is making his free throws, it makes our team that much better.”
Thursday’s game was a drastic change from the Bruins’ typical slow-down offense this season. On Thursday, the Bruins caused 13 Cal turnovers and scored 50 points, many of them on the fast break, in the second half.
The normal beneficiary of those fast-break points was Shipp, who had 14 second-half points and helped the Bruins put the game out of reach.
“I think it was just a matter of me going out there and having fun again,” Shipp said of his play. “Earlier in the season, I was out there thinking too much.”
As a result of the fast-break baskets, the Bruins shot a phenomenal percentage from the field. The Bruins shot 64 percent in the second half, and they got contributions from nearly everyone on the team.
Especially critical was Mata, who scored 10 of his career-high 14 points in the second half and grabbed five rebounds.
Numerous times during that second half, the home crowd erupted into cheers as Mata made shot after shot from the free-throw line.
“It’s all about confidence,” Mata said of free-throw shooting. “I’ve been making them in practice and now it’s just about making them in the game.
“I made seven in a row (on Thursday), so I am pretty pleased.”
Besides Mata and Shipp, the Bruins had three other players score over eight points.
Leading scorer Arron Afflalo had 13 points, while sophomore Alfred Aboya had nine points as the Bruins finished with an impressive 17 assists for the game.
“If everyone is out there playing well, it makes our offense better,” guard Darren Collison said. “We have the type of team that we can have different players step up every game.”
On defense, the Bruins did a fantastic effort against Cal’s second-leading scorer Ayinde Ubaka. Ubaka, who was held scoreless in the two teams’ first matchup, only finished with 10 points on three of five shooting.
The rest of the Cal team shot exceptionally well from the field, however, as freshman Ryan Anderson finished with 21 points and the Bears shot 61 percent from the field for the game.
It was that shooting that allowed Cal to build a 14-4 lead to start the game, and only trail the game by one at halftime.
“Our defense was unacceptable in the first half, and coach talked to us about that,” Afflalo said. “We knew we can’t let teams to shoot so well, because that will hurt us in the long run.”
In the end, however, it is only Thursday’s victory that will matter.
The victory gave UCLA redemption against the Bears after Cal had beaten the Bruins two consecutive years at home.
More importantly, it gave the Bruins a two-game lead over Washington State, who lost to Oregon on Thursday, for first place in the Pac-10, and set up a showdown on Saturday against Stanford, who beat the Bruins in Palo Alto last month.
The Bruins can now clinch the Pac-10 title by winning two of their last three games.
“It’s great for us that we can control our destiny,” Collison said. “But we are not worried about that right now. Stanford outscored us 50-31 in the second half in the last game, and we don’t want that to happen again.”
If the Bruins play against Stanford like they did against Cal in the second half of Thursday’s game, Collison and UCLA should have no worries about exacting their revenge against the Cardinal.
DRIBBLERS: Howland wasn’t happy with the performance of his reserves in the final minutes of the game. With freshmen Nikola Dragovic, Russell Westbrook, James Keefe and sophomores Michael Roll and Ryan Wright on the floor, the Bruins rushed shots offensively and gave up easy baskets on the defensive end.
Howland reinserted Collison and Afflalo in the last minute of the game out of frustration with his reserves.
“We did a very poor job of guarding them with a nice lead,” Howland said.