Regrets, Ben Howland has a few as UCLA loses to Arizona
The Wildcats beat the Bruins, 85-74, as Derrick Williams leads Arizona.
By Ben Bolch
The Los Angeles Times
11:22 PM PST, January 27, 2011
Reporting from Tucson
It was a defeat that left Ben Howland filled with regret.
If only the UCLA coach had gotten Reeves Nelson more touches …
If only he had played Tyler Honeycutt fewer minutes …
If only he had started Anthony Stover on Arizona's Derrick Williams to begin the second half …
There was also plenty to lament about the Bruins' defense and three-point shooting during an 85-74 loss to the Wildcats on Thursday night at the McKale Center, but those issues may not be so easy to fix.
In case UCLA needed a reminder of what it's like to play a dynamic and athletic team after rolling over the dregs of the Pacific 10 Conference in recent weeks, Williams and Arizona were all too happy to provide it.
Williams, the sophomore power forward who projects as a small forward in the NBA, scored 22 points on seven-for-10 shooting while maneuvering around the Bruins as if they were traffic pylons.
"With me being a true center, him being out of my position, I had to do what I could do," said UCLA's Joshua Smith, who had 13 points and one rebound in 19 minutes in his return from a head and neck injury that had sidelined him a week.
The Wildcats (17-4 overall, 6-2 Pac-10) shot 60.9% in the second half, continually driving past the Bruins (13-7, 5-3) for uncontested layups and dunks, on the way to taking over sole possession of second place in the conference.
"Our defense in the second half was very porous," Howland said.
UCLA's outside shooting was simply poor. The Bruins made only two of 15 three-pointers as their four-game winning streak came to a painful conclusion.
There was reason for optimism early when Nelson shrugged off the sprained left ankle that had slowed him in practice this week to make all seven of his shots and score 17 points in the first half. He finished with 24 points on 10-for-12 shooting to go with 10 rebounds, tying a career high for points, but he wasn't a big factor in the second half and fouled out with 2:58 left.
The Bruins received scant production from guard Lazeric Jones and Honeycutt, who combined to make one of 15 shots. Jones also committed a technical foul early in the second half when officials ruled he had intentionally elbowed Arizona guard Kyle Fogg after a play underneath the Wildcats' basket.
Fogg made all four of the ensuing free throws to give the Wildcats a 12-point lead they would stretch to 18 before the Bruins made a too-little-too-late comeback.
"They thought I might have blatantly elbowed him," Jones said, "but really I'm just an aggressive player. I'm just trying to get him off me … it's really nothing blatant."
Howland said the Bruins' video coordinator reviewed the play and told the coach that Jones had indeed made contact after the whistle.
"We just have to have better mental toughness than that to react to whatever bump or whatever happened," Howland said.
Defense was optional for the Bruins during much of the second half. Arizona scored the first five points on a three-pointer by Williams and a layup by Jesse Perry to go up by 10.
Howland lamented not putting Stover on Williams to start the second half, but the way the Wildcats star was slashing for one-handed tomahawk jams and alley-oop dunks, it might not have made any difference.
Honeycutt, who had eight points in 38 minutes, had his own thoughts after the game on the best way to stop Williams.
"Personally, I felt like we should have started smaller and have Reeves guarding Derrick and me play the four," Honeycutt said. "So we'll look at it and watch film and try to see what we need to work on."
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Men’s basketball, unable to defend against Derrick Williams and a quick Arizona offense, falls 85-74
By MATT STEVENS
The Daily Bruin in Men's Basketball, Sports
Published January 27, 2011 Updated: 2:58 PM
TUCSON, Ariz. — The Bruins and the Wildcats slugged it out in the desert for 23 minutes Thursday night, trading punches in a heavyweight fight for second place in the Pac-10.
Metaphorically speaking, that is.
Then junior guard Lazeric Jones threw an actual elbow after the whistle at the face of Arizona’s junior guard Kyle Fogg early in the second half.
And that was the knockout punch in the UCLA men’s basketball team’s 85-74 loss to Arizona.
“Obviously a key juncture,” coach Ben Howland said. “We have to have better mental toughness. … That was a bad momentum shift for us.”
Fogg calmly sank four free throws – the reward for a personal and subsequent technical foul on Jones – stretching the Wildcat lead to 11.
And though the Bruins tried to punch back, UCLA found itself on the ropes again minutes later, staggering behind another 6-0 Arizona run that was punctuated by a tomahawk jam – courtesy of Derrick Williams – that brought the capacity crowd at the McKale Center to its feet and gave the ’Cats a 16-point lead.
Now UCLA has a day to lick its wounds.
“(For) me offensively and defensively, it was a very terrible game,” said Jones, who finished the game scoreless, shooting 0-7. “As one of the leaders, I have to fight through adversity.”
UCLA (13-7, 5-3 Pac-10) tried to fight, and cut the lead to as little as eight with 6:11 to go, but down the stretch Arizona (17-4, 6-2) refused to cave and stayed perfect on its home floor.
Any flickering hope of a comeback fizzled when sophomore forward Reeves Nelson drew his fifth foul on a charge with just under three minutes to play.
Nelson led the team with 24 points and pulled down 10 rebounds but, like the rest of his team, he didn’t have an answer for Williams.
The sophomore forward led the Wildcats with 22 points, but more impressive was the way he amassed them.
The projected NBA lottery pick got to the free throw line 10 times, hit two 3-pointers when freshman Josh Smith and redshirt freshman Anthony Stover were playing off him, and exploded past the big men anytime they tried to face him up.
“It’s really hard,” Smith said of defending Williams. “I’m basically guarding a three-man in the (NBA). With me being a true center, I just had to do what I could do, and stuff happens.”
Williams’ 22 points, combined with 17 from sophomore guard Lamont Jones and 14 from Fogg, helped the Wildcats dish out a balanced, up-tempo attack.
Fogg, who torched the Bruins in two regular season meetings in 2009, was held scoreless in the first half, but found his way to the charity stripe 14 times in the second. He finished the game 12-of-14 from the line, none more important than the four in a row he nailed after getting fouled by Jones.
Jones said he apologized and shook hands with Fogg during the game.
“I’m just an aggressive player,” Jones said. “He’s falling on me and I’m trying to get him off me.”
The technical was just one of a number of calls that players said they were frustrated by on Thursday. Junior guard Malcolm Lee admitted that the team was mentally shaken by the number of calls against them and the fact that shots just weren’t falling.
UCLA was only 2-for-15 from beyond the arc. Conversely, Arizona was 6-of-10 from 3-point range and shot 52 percent for the game.
“Anytime you go down by 16 or 18 points to a good team like Arizona, it’s going to be hard to come back, especially when they’re at home,” Nelson said.
Now UCLA has only a day and a half to regroup for a matchup with Arizona State on Saturday after failing in one of its last opportunities to nab a signature win.
Lee said the team certainly can’t afford to leave the state of Arizona 0-2 and must now focus on its Saturday contest.
“This game was real big,” Lee said. “And although this game was big – this game’s over.”
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Fogg gets to UCLA, and Arizona gets away
Published: Jan. 27, 2011
Updated: Jan. 28, 2011 12:00 a.m.
BY SCOTT M. REID
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
TUCSON – On a night full of UCLA self-inflicted wounds in its 85-74 loss to Arizona on Thursday, none was as fatal as a thrown elbow. Like the Bruins' perimeter shooting, it didn't even connect.
Bruins point guard Lazeric Jones' misguided elbow toward Wildcats guard Kyle Fogg with 17:03 remaining resulted in a technical foul and four momentum-changing points.
In 20 seconds, thanks to six Fogg free throws, UCLA had gone from six to 12 points down ... and out.
"We just kind of faded away after that," UCLA guard Malcolm Lee said.
"I feel like we were ready to have a run anyway, but I think it was a big part in the game," said Fogg, a Brea Olinda High grad who finished with 14 points, including 12 free throws. "It got the crowd into it, too."
Arizona forward Derrick Williams made sure the McKale Arena crowd of 14,528 stayed in it. Williams finished with 22 points as Arizona (17-4, 6-2 Pac-10) secured sole possession of second place in the conference with a dominating second half in which the Wildcats exploited the Bruins' mismatch problems with Williams and UCLA lapses on both ends of the floor.
"We obviously didn't play the right way," said Bruins freshman center Joshua Smith, who finished with one rebound in his first game since suffering a head injury against Cal on Jan. 20.
UCLA (13-7, 5-3) committed 19 turnovers and watched Arizona shoot 60.9 percent from the field in the second half while going 2 of 15 from behind the 3-point arc on its own end.
Jones' elbow wasn't the only part of his game that was off-target. He finished scoreless, going 0 for 7 from the field and 0 for 2 from the line.
"Offensively and defensively, it was a terrible game," Jones said.
"UCLA' s 19 turnovers were big," Arizona coach Sean Miller said. "It's hard to win at home with that number of turnovers, and it's even harder to overcome that on the road."
Yet despite the turnovers and Smith & Co.'s matchup issues with the quicker Williams — "basically, I'm guarding a 3-man in the (NBA)," Smith said — UCLA at halftime was in a nationally televised game that had the feel of the storied Bruins-Wildcats battles of the 1980s and '90s.
"It definitely felt like a big game, being on ESPN, going for second place in the Pac-10," Fogg said.
And in the first half, Bruins forward Reeves Nelson rose to the occasion. Nelson had been questionable after spraining his left ankle against Stanford on Saturday, although he never doubted his participation.
"In the back of my mind I wasn't going to let them tell me I wasn't gong to play," Nelson said.
He was cleared Thursday morning by the UCLA medical staff and showed no sign of the injury in the opening half, going 7 of 7 from the field for 17 points in 16 minutes.
Nelson finished with a game-high 24 points.
But Arizona turned a 38-33 lead at intermission into a 10-point gap just 36 seconds into the second half thanks to a Williams' 3-point jumper and a layup by forward Jesse Perry.
UCLA was trying to get back into the game when Fogg, who had just made two foul shots, got free on what seemed like an endless parade of Arizona fast breaks in the second half.
As Fogg went up for the lay-in he got tangled up with UCLA's Jones. As the pair separated, Jones flung an elbow toward Fogg.
"It was nothing against that player," Jones said of Fogg. "I was just trying to get him off of me. I apologized to him during the game. I didn't try to blatantly elbow him. We're cool."
But after a video review, Jones was charged with a technical foul, and Fogg was awarded four free throws.
"Obviously," UCLA coach Ben Howland said, "it was a key juncture."
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UCLA scratched by 'Cats
Defense can't stop Arizona, which shoots 52 percent from field.
By Jon Gold, Staff Writer
The Los Angeles Daily News
Posted: 01/27/2011 10:30:54 PM PST
TUCSON, Ariz. - Ben Howland raced out onto the McKale Center court less than a minute into the second half, wearing a look of pure disgust.
He didn't walk onto the court, he stomped onto it, equal parts frustrated and angry, and with good reason.
A five-point Arizona halftime lead turned into 10 in the first 40 seconds of the second half, and UCLA was on the ropes.
The Bruins swayed a bit, mustered a couple punches in return, but ultimately could not recover in an 85-74 loss that snapped a four-game winning streak.
"We were down five at the half, and then they score five unanswered to go up, and it was (Derrick Williams) both times," Howland said. "Maybe I should've started Anthony Stover in the second half."
Stover, Joshua Smith, Reeves Nelson, Brendan Lane, it wouldn't have mattered.
Williams was a force in the post and on the perimeter for the streaking Wildcats, who have won five of six, scoring 22 points on 7-of-10 shooting.
Starting Stover for the third straight game, Howland decided to go with Smith in the second half.
The decision did not pay dividends.
"They took advantage of his mismatch with Josh," said Nelson, who had a game-high 24 points in 30 minutes before fouling out with about three minutes left. "He's really a four man, and a big guy like Josh - and it's nothing against Josh - it's just hard for him to guard a guy like Derrick who's skilled like that. It started with that, and after that they got confidence and hit open shots. They put on a show.
"They shot 52 percent, and that's all you really need to say."
Well, no, there's more.
The Wildcats did not just shoot well, they drove to the lane with ruthless ease. Perhaps the Bruins should swap mascots with Cal State Northridge. UCLA ole'd Arizona all night, letting guards Lamont Jones and Kyle Fogg waltz into the paint.
Jones had 17 points, nine more than his season average, while adding three steals and three assists, and Fogg had 14, including 12-of-14 free-throw shooting.
The Bruins suffered from a lack of defensive communication as the mismatched Arizona lineup toyed with their rotations and help defense. Many times, the Wildcats were left unimpeded in the post or open on the perimeter, particularly in the second half, when they shot 61 percent.
"We just got sped up," Smith said. "We let little things get in our head, let the crowd get in our head, let the refs get in our head. We didn't play the right way."
That goes for the UCLA offense, as well.
When Nelson picked up his fourth foul with 11:48 left in the game, he had eight field goals. The rest of the team to that point? Eight field goals.
Nelson shot 10 of 12 for the game; the rest of the Bruins shot 14 for 46.
They were particularly porous from long range, hitting just 2-of-15 3-pointers.
"We have to focus more on what we can control, instead of worrying about bad calls or running things wrong," said point guard Lazeric Jones, who finished 0-for-7 for zero points but added six assists. "We have to play our game. If we can stay mentally tough, I think we'd play a lot better.
"We just have to let things flow more; sometimes we're running too many plays instead of using our basketball minds."
Jones was involved in the game's other big swing, as he was called for a technical foul for elbowing Fogg in the face on a loose ball.
Fogg got four free throws - hitting all four - and Arizona got the ball back, though they could not capitalize on the possession.
"They made it a little more than what it really was; me and Fogg were cool," Jones said. "I apologized to him during the game. It really was nothing blatant, I'm just an aggressive player. If someone's falling on me, I'm just trying to get them off me. It really wasn't malicious or anything like that."
The Wildcats sure responded angrily, however, stretching an eight-point lead before the foul to an 18-point lead just four minutes later, the Bruins' biggest deficit of the season.
"It was real hard," said UCLA sophomore small forward Tyler Honeycutt, after finihshing 1-for-8 from the field. "We try to tell ourselves not to give up and we played hard at the end. I always thought the game was winnable so we kept trying to push it and get stops and force turnovers."
Click on boxscore to enlarge (from Yahoo Sports)
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