UCLA junior point guard Lazeric Jones tries to cut Villanova senior point guard Corey Fisher's path to the hoop. Unfortunately, Fisher was not to be denied last night. Fisher scorched UCLA for 26 points. Photo: Nick Laham / Getty ImagesMen’s basketball falls to Villanova’s offense at the NIT Season Tip-Off semifinals, 82-70 By ELI SMUKLER
The Daily Bruin
Updated: 11:45 PM
UCLA Men's Basketball Falls to No. 7 Villanova at Madison Square Garden
UCLA falls to Villanova in the semifinals of the NIT Season Tip-Off at Madison Square Garden Wednseday night, 82-70.
MANHATTAN, N.Y. – The pick-and-roll is basketball’s most fundamental offensive scheme, but if used properly it is a deadly weapon.
Call the “Law and Order” crew because the UCLA men’s basketball team (3-1) was killed by the ball screen at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night as No. 7 Villanova (5-0) ran the play over and over again en route to an 82-70 victory in the semifinals of the NIT Season Tip-Off Tournament.
“Pretty much they were just eating us up on the ball picks,” UCLA junior guard Malcolm Lee said. “It seemed like they were running pick-and-rolls for 40 minutes.”
Villanova coach Jay Wright praised his UCLA counterpart Ben Howland as “one of the top defensive coaches in the game” after the Wildcats fought off several Bruin runs in the second half to advance to Friday’s final against No. 24 Tennessee.
In his own postgame press conference, though, Howland had his reading glasses on, studying the stat sheet, trying to pinpoint exactly where his defensive game-planning had led him astray.
“We probably should have hedged screens differently than we did, and that’s my fault,” he said.
Villanova controlled the game with its offensive aggression, and UCLA spent the whole night trying to catch up.
Villanova senior guard Corey Fisher led all scorers with 26 points, 14 of which were a result of getting to the charity stripe. His backcourt teammates Maalik Wayns and Corey Stokes added 19 and 16 points, respectively, off a lot of on-ball screens at the top of the key that allowed them to sprint past the late Bruin defense.
“Those guards are really good,” sophomore forward Tyler Honeycutt said. “They just know how to get to the rack and finish.”
The Bruins were not able to push the ball in transition as has been their goal this season, partially because so many Wildcat possessions ended in made buckets or at least free-throw attempts, which allowed them to set up before UCLA could beat them back down the court.
Even so, UCLA had four players in double figures, including Lee, who led the team with 13 points despite being held scoreless in the first half. Lee, who had missed the Bruins’ last game against Pacific with a sprained ankle, only just rejoined team practices on Tuesday in New York, but he made a difference in the second period.
“I was settling for too many jumpers in the first half, then I just decided I’m going to try to get to the rack … because our team as a whole wasn’t getting to the line,” Lee said. “I was just trying to be more aggressive.”
Sophomore forward Reeves Nelson had his third straight double-double, scoring 10 points and grabbing a team-high 13 rebounds.
The Wildcats started with their foot already on the gas pedal, jumping out to an 8-0 lead, but the Bruins were never far behind in this game with an offensive spurt of their own.
In fact, UCLA was only trailing 30-27 with 4:31 to play in the first half, but then Villanova hit its stride at just the right time. The school from Philadelphia was all of a sudden heading into its Garden locker room up by 15 points.
“We thought we had a chance to win,” Howland said. “So it was disappointing at halftime to be down as much as we were.”
But Howland’s team did not back down after the break, pushing the lead back down into single digits on multiple occasions. UCLA had a player at the free-throw line down six two separate times in the second half, but neither free throw was converted, and that was as close as the Bruins would get to their veteran Big East opponent.
“These experiences will help us,” Howland said. “Bottom line is we have to learn from it.”
Though the Bruins did not get revenge for their 2009 loss to the Wildcats in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, they will get a chance to repeat against its first round victory from the same year.
UCLA will play Virginia Commonwealth, a team it bested by a single point two seasons ago, in the consolation game of the NIT Tip-Off on Friday at 11:30 a.m. PST.
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’Nova claws past UCLA in New York POSTED: November 25, 2010
By Joe Juliano
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
philly.com
NEW YORK – Jay Wright anxiously awaited Villanova’s semifinal matchup in the NIT Season Tip-Off to see how his Wildcats would fare if faced with adversity, and he got what he wanted to see.
The Wildcats came out for the second half holding a 15-point lead Wednesday night and suddenly couldn’t make a shot. Some of it was their own misfiring. Some of it was UCLA’s energized defense, which sagged into the paint to blunt the drives of Corey Fisher and Maalik Wayns.
But Fisher and Wayns helped their team stay in front, and Mouphtaou Yarou contributed with the best rebounding game of his career, to lead the seventh-ranked Cats to an 82-70 victory over the Bruins at Madison Square Garden.
Villanova (5-0) moved into Friday’s championship game against No. 24 Tennessee. The Volunteers knocked off Virginia Commonwealth, 77-72, in Wednesday night’s other semifinal.
Fisher led all scorers with 26 points and Wayns added 19. Yarou contributed 13 points and a career-high 16 rebounds to go with three blocked shots.
Fisher and Wayns enjoyed success in the first half taking their defenders to the basket at will. But in the second half, the drives weren’t nearly as effective, with the Bruins forcing them into the occasional wild shot off the drive.
The Wildcats hit just 4 of their first 20 shots from the field in the second half, including a drought of 6 minutes, 43 seconds without a field goal. But the Bruins (3-1) never were able to get closer than six, in part because of a 2-of-7 dry spell from the free throw line at one stretch.
“Nothing changes,” Fisher said. “Me and Maalik are going to be aggressive at all times. If we don’t get a shot, we’re going to see the next guys. We have guys like (Corey) Stokes and (Dominic) Cheek and guys that can knock down shots. We got in the lane and we just took what the defense gave us.”
Wright appreciated the constant attacking but admitted Fisher and Wayns might have been a little overly aggressive at times, especially with the defense backing into the lane.
“I think that’s something they can learn from,” he said. “I would always rather them be aggressive and make mistakes on aggression rather than not looking for the shot. It was a little bit too aggressive sometimes. But we’ll learn from that.”
Wayns, the sophomore from Roman Catholic, drew oohs and aahs from the sizeable Villanova delegation in the crowd of 6,746 with his blasts into the lane. He was particularly effective in a 14-2 run that closed the first half, blowing by his man on back-to-back possessions as if the UCLA player was standing still.
The run enabled the Wildcats to go into the locker room with a 44-29 lead, which would turn out to be their largest of the night. Then came the struggles in the second half after coach Ben Howland re-adjusted the UCLA defense.
Fortunately, the Cats had Yarou, their 6-foot-10 sophomore whose development last season was set back when he had to sit out a month with hepatitis. When he wasn’t grabbing rebounds, he was a menacing presence in the paint if the UCLA guards beat their defenders.
“Coach always wants me to play hard,” Yarou said. “And we wanted to block the shot. That’s what I was trying to do.”
Wright called Yarou’s 2009-10 season “a brutal year for him &hellip like a redshirt year.”
“That’s what we expect from him,” he said. “He can be a force inside. We never have a big guy that when he gets four fouls, we’re trying to get him back in the game. It’s nice to have a big guy, you want to get him back in there. He was a great presence in the paint.”
UCLA still was in the game with 5:44 to play when Reeves Nelson sank a free throw to make it 62-56. But Wayns knocked down a three-pointer and Yarou deposited a putback on an outstanding second effort to get the margin back to 11, and Villanova managed to stave off the Bruins.
Asked if he was surprised by UCLA’s comeback, Wright quipped, “I was more surprised we were up 15 at the half.
“I knew that team was not going to go away,” he said. “They grinded it. They did a good job. That’s a sign of Ben’s teams – great discipline and they did a really good job. That’s why I feel good about this win. I feel good about our team.”
Malcolm Lee led UCLA with 13 points. The Bruins’ top two scorers entering the game, Reeves Nelson and Tyler Honeycutt, combined for 18, a little more than half their average, and shot an aggregate 7 of 18.
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UCLA loses to VillanovaWildcats' guards are the key in 82-70 victory in NIT semifinal.
November 24, 2010|By Ben Bolch Reporting from New York
The Los Angelinos Times
The game had been over for more than 20 minutes, and Lazeric Jones still seemed unsure of himself.
The UCLA junior guard and his teammates had been repeatedly beaten by Villanova's breakneck backcourt tandem of Corey Fisher and Maalik Wayns, a blur unlike anything the Bruins had experienced in three season-opening victories over mid-major teams.
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UCLA loses to VillanovaWildcats' guards are the key in 82-70 victory in NIT semifinal.By Ben Bolch
The Los Angelinos Times
10:51 PM PST, November 24, 2010
Reporting from New York
The game had been over for more than 20 minutes, and Lazeric Jones still seemed unsure of himself.
The UCLA junior guard and his teammates had been repeatedly beaten by Villanova's breakneck backcourt tandem of Corey Fisher and Maalik Wayns, a blur unlike anything the Bruins had experienced in three season-opening victories over mid-major teams.
"I tried, I guess," Jones said. "I didn't do a great job at it. I guess we have to go back in practice and correct some things."
The list of fixes will be a long one after the seventh-ranked Wildcats handed the Bruins an 82-70 loss Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden in a semifinal of the NIT Season Tip-Off.
UCLA shot poorly in the first half, committed too many fouls in the second and missed four consecutive free throws when the Bruins had whittled a 15-point halftime deficit to six with 7 minutes 53 seconds remaining.
"They are a fine team and we'll get better with experience," Bruins Coach Ben Howland said. "Lazeric's playing in a big game really for the first time against a top-10 team. … We have to learn from it and bounce back."
Villanova (5-0) made 17 of 20 free throw attempts in the second half, keeping the Bruins from getting uncomfortably close. Tennessee Coach Bruce Pearl, scouting the game from press row in advance of Friday's championship, got up and left with the Wildcats leading by 11 with 1:24 to go.
UCLA (3-1) will play Virginia Commonwealth (3-1) Friday in a consolation game.
The Bruins aren't playing for a title in large part because they couldn't contain Fisher (26 points) and Wayns (19), who repeatedly drove for easy baskets during a first half in which the Wildcats took a 15-point lead and delighted the pro-Villanova crowd.
UCLA's best shooters struggled to make shots. Sophomore forward Reeves Nelson, who came into the game shooting 75%, made only four of 10.
"I take responsibility for not shooting well," said Nelson, who nonetheless logged his third consecutive double-double with 10 points and 13 rebounds.
"I thought I got fouled on probably three of the shots I missed, but the refs didn't see it that way."
UCLA junior guard Malcolm Lee scored 13 points in his return from a sprained left ankle but struggled with his shooting touch, making three of nine shots.
Back in the starting lineup after being sidelined for most of the previous two games, Lee looked particularly out of sorts in the opening minutes, missing a jumper from one baseline and then the other. He misfired on all four of his first-half shots.
Villanova scored the game's first eight points, but the Bruins remained within striking distance by finding each other for easy baskets.
Nelson whipped a pass through defenders to Brendan Lane for a dunk and then Lane lobbed an over-the-top pass to Joshua Smith for another dunk.
But then UCLA started getting sloppy, committing turnover after turnover as Villanova closed the half on a 14-2 run.
The key was Wayns, who repeatedly burned Jones for layups, increasing what had been a three-point Villanova lead with 41/2 minutes left in the half to a 44-29 advantage at intermission.
"Wayns really hurt us at the end of the half," Howland said, "going left — the way we knew he was going to go — two times in a row."
It was indicative of a game in which the Bruins knew what was coming but were powerless to stop it.
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Guard trio carries Nova over UCLANovember, 25, 2010 Nov 252:07AM ET
By Andy Katz
ESPN.COM
NEW YORK -- Scottie Reynolds got Villanova back to a Final Four with an epic, game-ending layup to beat Pitt in the 2009 Elite Eight.
The shot will forever be etched in Nova lore.
But Reynolds' influence on the Wildcats is now gone and it shows.
A trio of Villanova guards -- Corey Fisher, Corey Stokes and Maalik Wayns -- don’t mean any disrespect by this, but they feel they leaned too much on Reynolds last season. They looked for him to constantly bail them out of a bad situation.
Now they’ve all moved on.
“Ever since Scotty’s freshman year, he had the ball in his hands,’’ Stokes said. “The team relied on Scotty. He was one of the greatest players in Villanova history. I don’t want to take anything away from him, but we can all score. It doesn’t matter who has the ball. Coach [Jay Wright] feels comfortable with either me, Maalik or Fish with the ball in his hands.’’
And so the baton has been passed from Reynolds to the trio of Stokes, Fisher and Wayns. The Villanova guards dominated the ball in an 82-70 NIT Season Tip-Off semifinal victory over UCLA Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden. The Wildcats will play Tennessee in Friday's championship. The three guards combined for 45 of the Wildcats’ 62 shots. They made 17. And didn’t hurt that they were a combined 22-of-24 at the free throw line. Fisher finished with 26 points, Wayns with 19 and Stokes with 16.
Nova has Mouphtaou Yarou inside (13 points and 16 boards vs. UCLA) and if a Villanova student code of conduct committee gives suspended freshman forward JayVaughn Pinkston a chance to play sometime this season (he’s facing simple assault charges for a punch on another Villanova student at a party earlier this month), then there will be even more balance. Wright said earlier Wednesday that the committee could hear Pinkston’s case next week. He is allowed to practice with the team but can’t represent the university and sit on the bench.
Seeing Pinkston in practice Wednesday, it was clear that he would have a major impact on this squad at both ends of the court. But instead of waiting on the legal case, the team will wait on the school's verdict since this was a student-on-student crime.
For now and the foreseeable future, Nova will be driven by its guards, much like it was on that 2006 Elite Eight team led by Randy Foye, Allan Ray and Kyle Lowry.
“That’s our offense,’’ Wayns said. “That’s the way coach Wright tells us to play. We’re not where those guys were [Foye, Ray and Lowry] since they’re all pros. But we’re aggressive and we’re giving our team the best chance to win. Last year, if things got bad we turned to Scottie. We leaned on Scottie. Now it doesn’t matter since any of us can make a play.’’
UCLA’s trio of Malcolm Lee, Lazeric Jones and Jerime Anderson had their moments, but weren’t in the same level on a consistent basis as Nova’s guards.
The Wildcats don't have the one star like Connecticut’s Kemba Walker. A more appropriate comparison might be the tandem of Brad Wanamaker and Ashton Gibbs of Pitt or Georgetown’s Austin Freeman, Chris Wright and Jason Clark.
“We’ve had more time together,’’ Fisher said of his senior classmate Stokes. “Maalik played with us last year too. We had time to watch Scottie and learn from him and we’ve had time to gel.’’
What Villanova has this season -- something that was lost at times last season in falling flat against Saint Mary’s in the second round of the NCAA tournament -- is a cohesion among the guards.
“We’ve got great chemistry,’’ Stokes said. “We’re always together off the court and it translates on the court. It should be like this the whole year.’’
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Villanova Faces Vols in Tip-Off FinalMen’s College Roundup
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 24, 2010
Corey Fisher scored a career-high 26 points and Mouphtaou Yarou had 13 points and 16 rebounds to lead No. 7 Villanova to an 82-70 victory over U.C.L.A. on Wednesday night in the semifinals of the N.I.T. Season Tip-Off.
The Wildcats (5-0) will face No. 24 Tennessee in the championship game Friday night at Madison Square Garden. The Volunteers beat Virginia Commonwealth, 77-72, in the other semifinal.
Villanova’s three-guard offense, which also includes Maalik Wayns, who had 19 points, and Corey Stokes, who had 16, got the Wildcats the lead with a game-opening 8-0 run, and they were never behind with Yarou taking care of things inside.
Malcolm Lee had 13 points for the Bruins (3-1).
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Corey Fisher nets 26 as Villanova drops UCLA in semis Villanova Stops UCLA, 82-70
UCLA's Reeves Nelson (22) shoots over Villanova's Mouphtaou Yarou in the first half. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II) Associated Press
NEW YORK -- Corey Fisher has a simple way of explaining Villanova's three-guard offense that also includes Maalik Wayns and Corey Stokes.
"We both do the same thing, and Coach is always on us about staying on attack -- even when we're tired -- I'm like, 'Coach, I need a break,' and he's like, 'Attack, attack," Fisher said of he and fellow point/scoring guard Wayns. "If I'm down, Maalik picks me up, and if we're both down Corey picks us up. That's why we're a great team."
The seventh-ranked Wildcats were impressive Wednesday night in their 82-70 victory over UCLA in the semifinals of the NIT Season Tip-Off.
Fisher finished with a career-high 26 points, while Wayns had 19 and Stokes 16.
It wasn't just the three guards, either. Villanova may finally have a big man good enough to make a difference at the school known for its stellar guards.
Six-foot-10 sophomore center Mouphtaou Yarou had 13 points, a career-high 16 rebounds and three blocks to dominate inside.
"That was big for us, Mouph getting 16 rebounds," Wildcats coach Jay Wright said. "He really struggled last year, you don't need to hear all the drama, but just a brutal year for him last year. ... He can be a force inside. We've never really had a big guy who, he gets their fourth foul, you want to get him back in. We've always had a bunch of guards to run in there. It's nice to have a big guy."
The Wildcats (5-0) will face No. 24 Tennessee in the championship game Friday night at Madison Square Garden. The Volunteers beat Virginia Commonwealth 77-72 in the other semifinal.
"They've got big, long, athletic players," Wright said of the Volunteers. "We got to coach Scotty Hopson this summer, really good player. ... I think a defensive team that's similar to UCLA."
Malcolm Lee had 13 points for the Bruins (3-1), while Lazeric Jones had 12 and Reeves Nelson had 10 points and 13 rebounds.
"They're a very, very good team," UCLA coach Ben Howland said. "I thought we did a good job coming back, fighting back. I think we had it to six in the second half. ... We missed four free throws in a row and got stops and had a chance to whittle the lead."
Villanova closed the first half with a 14-2 run to take a 44-29 lead. Fisher had six points in the spurt and Wayns had four. The Bruins were their own worst enemy during the run, not making a field goal over the last 5:30 and committing five turnovers.
UCLA was able to get within eight points four times midway through the second half as Villanova started the half making four of its first 20 shots from the field. But each time the Bruins seemed ready to make a big run, the Wildcats answered to get the lead back to double figures.
The fifth time the Bruins got within eight they scored to get within 58-52, but they hurt themselves at the free throw line.
UCLA made 11 of its first 12 free throws in the game. Once the Bruins got within six with 7:53 to play, they made just two of seven attempts over the next two minutes and Villanova took advantage to start opening the lead again. UCLA never got closer than eight points the rest of the way.
"I was more surprised we were up 15 at half," Wright said. "We've coached against Ben and I knew that team wasn't going to go away, and they really grinded and did a good job. ... That's a sign of Ben's teams, great discipline, and they did a really good job. That's why I feel good about this win."
The Wildcats kept their assist-to-turnover ratio on the plus side in the early season. They had 11 assists and seven turnovers against UCLA, making their season total 87 assists to 46 turnovers.
Jones was asked about the Bruins guards' job of trying to contain Villanova's three guards.
"I tried, I guess, didn't do a great job of it. It wasn't my best effort at all," he said. "They were as good as they're supposed to be. They have some really good guards, two of the best guards in the country. ... We learned some things."
This was the Wildcats' 17th straight win in November and they are now 13-12 at Madison Square Garden under Wright, who recruits heavily in the New York area.
"I know for me, one of our biggest concerns every time we play here, it's the opponent and then it's our New York guys being in the Garden," Wright said. "They're overexcited, they want to do well."
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Rapid Reaction: Villanova 82, UCLA 70November, 25, 2010 Nov 2512:04AM ET
By Kieran Darcy
ESPNNY
NEW YORK -- A quick postgame take on No. 7 Villanova's 82-70 victory over UCLA at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night:
WHAT IT MEANS: Villanova goes to 5-0 on the season, with its first major-quality win, and advances to the championship game of the NIT Season Tip-Off. A rebuilding UCLA team drops to 3-1 on the season, but surely gains some confidence, hanging with one of the top teams in the country.
SPIRITED EFFORT: Villanova closed the first half on a 14-2 run, taking a 44-29 lead into intermission. But UCLA mounted an impressive comeback, cutting the deficit to just six, 62-56, with 5:30 left to play. But the Bruins never could get any closer than that. They showed a lot of heart though, battling the way they did.
UNSUNG HERO: When it comes to Villanova, most of the attention goes to its guard play, and rightfully so -- the starting trio was excellent on Wednesday night. Corey Fisher poured in 26 points, while Maalik Wayns had 19 and Corey Stokes 16. But 6-foot-10 sophomore Mouphtaou Yarou posted a double-double, with 13 points and 16 rebounds -- a great performance by him, doing all the dirty work.
BALANCED, BUT ... UCLA had four players in double figures, but no player with more than 13 points (Malcolm Lee). The Bruins are a tough team to face, but they don't have a top-flight scorer like Nova's Stokes, who they can rely on in the clutch, night after night.
WHAT'S NEXT: Villanova will play No. 24 Tennessee on Friday in the NIT championship game -- tip-off will be approximately 5 p.m. UCLA will take on VCU in the third-place game, scheduled for 2:30 p.m.
Click on box score to enlarge (from ESPN) 
UCLA's Malcolm Lee, right, takes a rebound away from Virginia Commonwealth's D.J. Haley during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in the consolation match of the NIT Season Tip-Off tournament on Friday, Nov. 26, 2010, in New York. Photo Henny Ray Abrams AP.
Virginia Commonwealth's Jamie Skeen, right, is fouled by UCLA's Tyler Honeycutt, center, and Joshua Smith during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in the consolation match of the NIT Season Tip-Off tournament on Friday, Nov. 26, 2010, in New York. Photo Henny Ray Abrams AP.
