Last night’s game against Cal started out familiar
enough.
UCLA hung with the Bears throughout the first half, showing
signs of organization and motivation en route to building up a
38-33 halftime lead.
But all of the 8,061 in attendance at Pauley Pavilion yesterday
remembered previous Bruin teases, where the team would excite its
fans with the possibility of an upset just before disastrously
choking the game away.
After all, in the past month the Bruins were either tied with or
beating Stanford, Oregon State, USC and Arizona State at
halftime.
And they lost to each of them.
Going into the second half of last night’s 76-75 Bruin
win, there was no reason to expect that UCLA would deviate from the
trend.
The Bruins (6-16, 3-10 Pac-10) haven’t beaten a ranked
team all season, and No. 18 Cal (18-5, 11-3 Pac-10) was hot, having
won four in a row going into last night’s matchup.
Yet something un-Bruin like happened in the second half.
The team came out of the locker room with a high energy level,
eventually building up a 13-point lead with 13 minutes
remaining.
“At halftime, we talked about how we wanted to come out
strong,” guard Ryan Walcott said. “And we kept our
poise.”
Granted, many fans thought a typical Bruin collapse was in
progress when Cal guard Richard Midgley drove the lane for a lay-up
to tie the game at 69 with 2:47 remaining.
But the UCLA players seem to be finally learning how to keep the
game manageable even when their opponent makes a run.
“We weren’t worried,” said forward T.J.
Cummings, who finished with 17 points on 7-for-8 shooting.
“What we’ve gone through has helped us develop a
backbone, so we were ready and we executed.”
Cal forward Amit Tamir gave Cal a 72-70 lead with 51 seconds
remaining after he drained a three-pointer.
But after a Jason Kapono 3-point miss, Cummings followed with a
lay-in to tie the game and force overtime.
UCLA lost its previous two overtime games this season, both at
home to San Diego and Oregon.
This time the Bruins got down again after Cal forward Joe Shipp,
who finished with 18 points, hit a crucial three-pointer with 2:43
remaining.
But Cal never scored after that.
Kapono pulled UCLA to within one after draining two free throws,
and then forward Dijon Thompson drained a 16-foot left baseline
jumper with six seconds left to hand UCLA the 76-75 win.
“It was wet,” forward Andre Patterson said.
“When I saw it in (Dijon’s) hands, I knew it was going
in.”
Thomspon finished with 20 points and 11 rebounds, the first
double-double of his career.
Senior guard Ray Young, who started in place of an injured
Cedric Bozeman, had a season-high 18 points.
The win is the first for UCLA at home since Dec. 14 against
Portland, and the first home Pac-10 win of the year.
With Washington’s loss to Oregon State last night, the
Bruins move to eighth place in the conference and are now in line
to make the Pac-10 tournament.
“If we keep winning, we’ll be the seventh or sixth
seed,” Walcott said.
But head coach Steve Lavin knows the Bruins need to take one
game at a time.
“We’re incrementally making progress,” he
said.