UCLA basketball: "We can do ugly all by ourselves"

 
Washington powers past UCLA, 97-68

By Chris Foster
The Los Angeles Times
Feb 21 2010

The nation, for some reason, needed to see this.

UCLA has had enough black eyes this season, though that has nothing to do with the shiner forward Reeves Nelson is sporting. The Bruins have been kicked around by the Big West Conference, with losses to Long Beach State and Cal State Fullerton, and beaten up by USC.

But those were regional missteps. What made a 97-68 loss to Washington at Bank of America Arena on Saturday night even more painful was that it went out to a country that is used to associating "UCLA" with "quality basketball."

ESPN "Game Day" rolled into Seattle, giving the Pacific 10 Conference a spotlight dance. Instead, what was on display to a national audience was the fact that the conference's brand-name team isn't quite up to its reputation.

"ESPN, national television, the bright lights, and they came out with intensity," Nelson said.

And UCLA?

"That was more than embarrassing," said Nelson, who had a team-high 14 points despite a swollen right eye from a fall against Washington State on Thursday. "We didn't even put up a fight."

The Bruins (12-14 overall, 7-7 in conference play) were mere fodder for the Huskies, who kicked sand in their face from the start.

"We really got shellacked," Coach Ben Howland said.

Things were so bad that Howland used four of his five timeouts in a first half that ended with Washington leading, 49-26. Howland used his last when Quincy Pondexter finished off a steal with a sweep dunk for a 57-30 lead with 17 minutes 41 seconds to play.

"I was just trying to stop the bleeding," Howland said.

But nothing Howland diagramed in the huddle slowed the Huskies, or kick-started his team. What the Bruins received as parting gifts was their worst loss to Washington and the worst loss in Howland's UCLA coaching career.

The lesson from the loss being, "learn from it and forget about it," forward Nikola Dragovic said standing in hall outside the Bruins' locker room.

Inside, there had been long postgame coaches meeting, followed by a few more minutes with players, punctuated by a loud bang against the wall as it broke up.

The time alone didn't result in any clear-cut answers.

What happened on the court?

"I don't know," senior guard Michael Roll said. "Washington came out and did a good job."

Why couldn't the Bruins counter?

"I don't know," Roll said.

What Roll could accurately gauge the Bruins' mood.

"It's [lousy], real [lousy]," Roll said.

The Huskies were in better spirits, though the victory will likely not help their national reputation

Normally a victory over UCLA would be a big bounce to a team's NCAA tournament hopes. But Washington (18-9, 8-7) remains a middle-of-the-pack team in a mediocre conference.

Still, on TV the Huskies had to look like a team with national juice. This went downhill fast for the Bruins. Pondexter made a three-point basket on the first possession and scored 12 of the Huskies' first 14 points. He finished with 20 points.

Dragovic bricked a shot on UCLA's first possession.

And so it went.

Washington shot 68% in the first half and 59% for the game. The Huskies made 11 of 21 three-point shots.

UCLA's numbers didn't add up, most noticeably their 18 turnovers.

"Each of our turnovers in the first half led to an easy basket, or so it seemed," Howland said. "We couldn't handle their pressure. We couldn't even get a catch."

The solution?

"This is going to hurt for a while," Howland said. "But we have to come back Monday and concentrate."
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UCLA flustered early, blown out by Washington
By AL BALDERAS
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Published: Feb. 20, 2010
Updated: 11:27 p.m.


SEATTLE - You could blame it on Bank of America Arena, where the Washington Huskies were 16-2 before Saturday night's game.

You could blame it on Quincy Pondexter, the Huskies' senior guard who wanted to make a good showing in his final home game.

Or you could simply blame Washington's 97-68 victory over UCLA on the Bruins.

The onus for the 29-point loss, the worst since Ben Howland took over as Bruins coach, rests squarely with UCLA.

"It's frustrating because we thought we were ready for the game," said freshman forward Reeves Nelson, who led the Bruins with 14 points. "Obviously we weren't."

Unfortunately for the Bruins, it didn't take them long to figure that out.

Pondexter scored 10 of the Huskies' first 12 points while the Bruins made just one of their first 10 field-goal attempts.

By the time Nelson scored the Bruins' second field goal of the game, the Huskies were ahead, 14-7.

"Pondexter made a big shot to get them started," Howland said of a 3-pointer with time running out on the shot clock. "He's a great player.

"I thought early in the game we had a couple of bad shots that got us off to a bad start."

Brendan Lane's 3-point basket with 9:26 left in the first half cut the Huskies' lead to 22-16.

Washington responded with a 17-2 run that opened up a 39-18 lead and essentially ended the Bruins' chances of a weekend sweep in the state.

UCLA (12-14, 7-7) trailed by a 49-26 margin at halftime and was hoping to get to 12 points back early in the second half. The Huskies had their own ideas.

"Our team just came out and played the way we were supposed to play," Pondexter said.

"We did a great job of taking them out of their sets, something we couldn't do against USC (in Thursday's loss).

"We knew it was going to be a battle but we had to come out and throw the first punch, the second punch and the third punch so we could win this war."

The knockout punch came in the second half when they stretched their lead to 71-41. The Bruins couldn't get any closer than 25 points after that.

Pondexter finished with 20 points while Isaiah Thomas, who was held to 11 points in a loss to the Bruins last month, scored 17.

Thomas and Scott Suggs scored three 3-pointers each, as part of an 11-for-21 night for the Huskies. Thomas was 0 for 5 from beyond the 3-point line when the Huskies played at UCLA.

"Washington, at home, is a lot better team than on the road," said senior Michael Roll, who finished with six points, snapping his streak of seven consecutive games in double figures.

"It seems like they stretched us out a lot, and the middle of the zone was wide open because we had to get out to their shooters."

The Bruins were 3 of 17 from 3-point range on the way to their worst defeat ever on the Huskies' home court.

"We just played poorly," Roll added. "Very poorly."

Pondexter's final night at home included plenty of chants from fans, a highlight reel, a two-handed windmill dunk on a second-half breakaway and a long final ovation when Pondexter exited for the final time with 4:25 left.

"There is a lot of joy because you know, right now, Quincy Pondexter is ready to move on," Washington coach Lorenzo Romar said. "After this season is over, he'll be ready to move on and he is going to do just fine. He took advantage of his four years in school."
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UCLA gets trapped in Dawg pound

Washington hands Howland his worst loss as Bruins coach

By Jon Gold, Staff Writer
The Los Angeles Daily News
Updated: 02/20/2010 11:01:16 PM PST


SEATTLE - It was one of those days, and it started early.

An awkward 3-point attempt by Nikola Dragovic on the first possession.

Two missed free throws by Reeves Nelson.

A six-point deficit turning into a 10-point deficit, then 11, 12, 13 ...

By the time UCLA coach Ben Howland called a timeout with 5 minutes, 23 seconds left in the first half of the Bruins' matchup with Washington on Saturday night on national television, the Bruins were down 20.

By the time the timeout was over, it's a surprise UCLA wasn't down 200.

And too bad the refs couldn't call the fight, as the Huskies continued to put on a show in front of the nationally television audience and buried the Bruins 97-68 at Bank of America Arena, UCLA's worst loss of the Howland era and worst loss ever at Washington.

"The lights were bright tonight and they just came out with a level of intensity that was a lot bigger than our own," said Nelson, who led the Bruins with 14 points. "It was (the Huskies') senior night, and (Washington forward Quincy Pondexter) just made a lot of plays. He's a great player and he put on a show tonight, especially in the first half."

Pondexter killed UCLA from the Huskies' opening possession.

The Bruins opened in a 2-3 zone and seemed to have Washington solved early in the possession, but Pondexter moved around the perimeter and hit a contested 3-pointer with time running out.

That was only the beginning.

The Huskies senior had 14 first-half points on 5-of-7 shooting and finished with 20 for the game, after scoring 23 points in the teams' first matchup, a 62-61, last-second Bruins win.

"Looks like they were just shooting all night last night," said UCLA senior guard Michael Roll, who struggled in the first half with 0-for-5 shooting and finished with six points, his lowest in Pac-10 play. "They were just making shots. It started the first possession - we played good defense, got down the shot clock and Quincy just hit a three."

Pondexter wasn't the only one.

Washington sophomore guard Isaiah Thomas had 17 points on 7-of-14 shooting, after hitting just 4-of-11 shots for 11 points in the first matchup. Thomas, who entered the game shooting below 30 percent from behind the 3-point line in Pac-10 play, hit three of his first four for 13 first-half points.

"He had a lot of confidence today, and once he hit that first shot, I think he fed off the crowd and all the intensity everybody else on his team had," Nelson said. "Once you have a confidence as a shooter, it's a lot easier to hit shots, especially at home."

Meanwhile, UCLA (12-14, 7-7) struggled to even take shots at times.

Washington (18-9, 8-7) put on a devastating half-court press that befuddled the Bruins backcourt, forcing 18 turnovers, including seven by UCLA point guards Malcolm Lee and Jerime Anderson. With the Huskies overplaying the backcourt, the Bruins couldn't settle into a half-court offense and seemed lost offensively when things broke down.

"We really did a poor job handling their defensive pressure," Howland said. "That was the biggest thing in the first half, when they got the lead. We could not handle the pressure defense. We were having a hard time getting catches and running anything."

Running wasn't just a problem offensively.

As Washington's lead got bigger and bigger, UCLA's defensive tenacity dwindled and dwindled, the Huskies able to put on a clinic in their last home game this season.

Roll was visibly frustrated at times with the effort of some of his teammates, who failed to execute simple passes, were seconds late on defensive rotations and put little emphasis on the glass, where the Bruins were outrebounded 33-23.

"I saw it a lot and it's frustrating," Roll said. "We were down a lot, yeah, but if we come out in the second half and we punch them in the mouth right away, we could've got back in there real easy. But we just kinda folded."

Others shared the sentiment.

"People were watching and they can decide for themselves if we gave up," Nelson said. "You know how I have to answer that."