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UCLA's Norman Powell (4) defends against Cal's Allen Crabbe, left, during the first half Thursday.
BEN MARGOT, AP
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Rapid Reaction: Cal 76, UCLA 63
February, 14, 2013
FEB 14
8:59
PM PT
By Peter Yoon | ESPNLosAngeles.com
The UCLA Bruins, prone to poor performances cropping up throughout this season, had another one Thursday in a 76-63 loss to the California Golden Bears at Berkeley.
How it happened: The Bruins (18-7, 8-4) started the game flat and got flatter as the first half wore on, then tried to make a run in the second half but had dug too deep a hole early. Bruins coach Ben Howland's team fell out of a short-lived tie for first place in the Pac-12 standings.
California (15-9, 7-5) opened a 47-22 halftime lead by shooting 58.8 percent in the first half and outrebounding the Bruins 24-13 before intermission. The Bruins began the second half with a 14-4 run and looked as if they might make a game out of it when Shabazz Muhammad made a pair of free throws to cut Cal’s lead to 67-53 with 7:08 to play.
The Bruins made only two of their next eight shots, however, and the Golden Bears held on. Forward David Kravish led the Golden Bears with 18 points and 13 rebounds. Richard Solomon had 17 points and eight rebounds, Allen Crabbe had 16 points and Justin Cobbshad 12 points and nine assists.
Jordan Adams led UCLA with 15 points, while Muhammad scored 11 of his 13 points in the second half and added a career-high 11 rebounds. Larry Drew II had 12 points.
Player of the game: Kravish set a career high with 18 points and dominated the glass against the Bruins. He had more points and rebounds that UCLA starting forwards Travis Wear (seven points, four rebounds) and Kyle Anderson (six points, seven rebounds) combined. He made eight of 11 shots.
Stat of the game: The Bruins shot 37.7 percent for the game -- the third-lowest shooting performance for UCLA this season. They have failed to shoot better than 40 percent in four of their past five games. Also, Cal outrebounded UCLA 41-33. The Bruins have been outrebounded 299-236 over the past seven games.
What it means: UCLA is a team that has the talent to win the Pac-12 title, but doesn’t appear to have the consistency to get the job done down the stretch. The Bruins simply can’t shake the penchant for playing extremely poor basketball for stretches at a time, and it seems like it’s only a matter of time before they lay another egg like they did in the first half Thursday, against the USC Trojans a couple of weeks ago and against Cal Poly in an early-season loss.
What’s next: UCLA heads to Palo Alto for a game at Stanford on Saturday at 1 p.m. PT. The game is on ESPN2. California will be home for a game against USC on Sunday at 7 p.m. PT.
How it happened: The Bruins (18-7, 8-4) started the game flat and got flatter as the first half wore on, then tried to make a run in the second half but had dug too deep a hole early. Bruins coach Ben Howland's team fell out of a short-lived tie for first place in the Pac-12 standings.
California (15-9, 7-5) opened a 47-22 halftime lead by shooting 58.8 percent in the first half and outrebounding the Bruins 24-13 before intermission. The Bruins began the second half with a 14-4 run and looked as if they might make a game out of it when Shabazz Muhammad made a pair of free throws to cut Cal’s lead to 67-53 with 7:08 to play.
The Bruins made only two of their next eight shots, however, and the Golden Bears held on. Forward David Kravish led the Golden Bears with 18 points and 13 rebounds. Richard Solomon had 17 points and eight rebounds, Allen Crabbe had 16 points and Justin Cobbshad 12 points and nine assists.
Jordan Adams led UCLA with 15 points, while Muhammad scored 11 of his 13 points in the second half and added a career-high 11 rebounds. Larry Drew II had 12 points.
Player of the game: Kravish set a career high with 18 points and dominated the glass against the Bruins. He had more points and rebounds that UCLA starting forwards Travis Wear (seven points, four rebounds) and Kyle Anderson (six points, seven rebounds) combined. He made eight of 11 shots.
Stat of the game: The Bruins shot 37.7 percent for the game -- the third-lowest shooting performance for UCLA this season. They have failed to shoot better than 40 percent in four of their past five games. Also, Cal outrebounded UCLA 41-33. The Bruins have been outrebounded 299-236 over the past seven games.
What it means: UCLA is a team that has the talent to win the Pac-12 title, but doesn’t appear to have the consistency to get the job done down the stretch. The Bruins simply can’t shake the penchant for playing extremely poor basketball for stretches at a time, and it seems like it’s only a matter of time before they lay another egg like they did in the first half Thursday, against the USC Trojans a couple of weeks ago and against Cal Poly in an early-season loss.
What’s next: UCLA heads to Palo Alto for a game at Stanford on Saturday at 1 p.m. PT. The game is on ESPN2. California will be home for a game against USC on Sunday at 7 p.m. PT.
Half-hearted UCLA effort brings unbearable result
BERKELEY – From the jump Thursday night, UCLA couldn't seem to do much but dig its own grave.
Deeper and deeper the Bruins dug in the first half against Cal, each possession ending worse than the last. A blocked shot. A turnover. Another blocked shot. The digging continued to escalate as the crowd at Haas Pavilion grew louder and louder.
Cal's Allen Crabbe celebrates after scoring against UCLA during the first half Thursday.
BEN MARGOT, AP
Freshman Jordan Adams could sense the hole his teammates were digging — at one point, the Golden Bears went on a 15-0 run — but it wasn't until he looked up at the scoreboard that he realized how deep his team had gone with its lackluster opening effort. From where they had fallen — down by 28, at its worst — he knew climbing out would be near-impossible.
They gave their best effort to claw back, closing to 12, but when the buzzer mercifully sounded, the Bruins were left at the bottom of the hole they had dug, losing to Cal, 76-63.
A 47-22 halftime score marked Bruins' worst first half of the season.
"We fell down, and we didn't have the poise, with the crowd behind them, to get settled down," UCLA coach Ben Howland said. "We kept taking quick shots and it kept avalanching further and further and we kept digging the hole deeper and deeper."
And as the hole got deeper, the young Bruins (18-7, 8-4 Pac-12) continued to push the ball faster up the court, forcing up quick shots and losing focus on both ends. By the time the first half had ended, UCLA had shot almost 29 percent worse from the field than its counterpart.
But for an inexperienced team that's most comfortable on the break, slowing down the pace and working out of a halfcourt offense — like Howland had hoped — seemed to, again, be the Bruins' kryptonite.
"When we get down 8, 10, 12, we're speeding up trying to get it back by ourselves, and it's in good nature," Howland said. "It's not out of selfishness, but it just spirals into a bigger snowball."
Slow starts have plagued the Bruins in recent weeks, as they've been forced to play mostly from behind in four of their past five games. But against Cal (15-9, 7-5), freshman Shabazz Muhammad said, it wasn't just a slow start from the field. It was a lack of intensity — a problem that has proved to be UCLA's demise on several occasions.
"I just think our intensity (was different)," said Muhammad, who finished with 13 points and a career-high 11 rebounds. "The first half we came out and I don't know where our heads were at. Guys weren't rebounding. We weren't playing defense at all. They got off to a really fast start, and we tried to pick it up in the second half. You just can't play like that. That's what happens."
Muhammad came out with a head of steam to start the second half, scoring the Bruins' first five points and seven of their first 12. But with each desperate attempt to come back, Cal answered, dominating in the post and keeping UCLA at arm's length, despite being outscored by 12 points in the second half.
It was a far cry from the last time the two teams met — a game the Bruins won comfortably, 79-65. Outside the locker room after the game, Muhammad explained that the matchup's last result might have had something to do with his team's letdown this time.
"We beat Cal at our place and I think we kind of relaxed," Muhammad said, clearly frustrated.
And now, with another tough matchup awaiting Saturday at Stanford, UCLA might have run out of time to relax with six or seven teams jockeying for position at the top of the Pac-12.
"How we approach this mentally, how we fight this adversity now that we just experienced it is the key to everything," Howland said.
Contact the writer: rkartje@ocregister.com
Jumbled Pac-12 race should make for wild finish
SAN FRANCISCO – With only six games left in the Pac-12 season, only one thing is certain about the conference, just one season removed from one of its worst showings ever: The last three weeks should be a wild ride.
As the rest of the college basketball landscape has been as topsy-turvy as ever, the Pac-12 has followed suit. And after Thursday night's loss to Cal, UCLA is now one of at least seven teams that still have a chance to clinch the conference's regular season title.
Cal's Tyrone Wallace manages to pass the ball away from UCLA's Jordan Adams on Thursday. The Bruins' loss further complicated an already muddy Pac-12 picture.
BEN MARGOT, AP
That kind of parity can be a blessing or curse for a conference, especially one that so recently had seen its brand sink lower than a handful of mid-major conferences in terms of how many teams it sent to the NCAA Tournament.
"Our league is playing well," UCLA coach Ben Howland said Friday. "You look at 'SC. They're doing a great job right now and obviously in a positive direction they're playing. Cal is playing really well right now. Colorado has wins at Oregon and at home against Arizona. A lot of teams are doing a nice job within the conference. I think it's good for the conference. ... Our conference is back up."
And considering how low the conference was — without its regular-season winner in the tournament — that's saying something. But is the league as good as its parity leads us to believe?
Oregon currently sits atop the heap, but even the Ducks have shown weakness. Without guard Dominic Artis, Oregon lost three in a row before bouncing back with victories over Washington and Utah. And while the Bruins haven't exactly set the world on fire with their performance the past two weeks, they still stand just one game out of the conference lead with six games left.
"Top to bottom, there are more quality teams than there were last year," Washington coach Lorenzo Romar said this week. "There's not a whole lot of margin for any of us."
Unfortunately for UCLA, that slim margin of error will be tested in its next four games, all of which are against teams within three games of first place.
SHABAZZ AS PASSER
Freshman Shabazz Muhammad has proved time and time again that he's a dynamic scorer. Eighteen points per game in your first season of college basketball will certainly do that.
But where Muhammad has been relatively untested is in his ability to distribute when necessary, something that greatly affected his performance in the Bruins' loss to Cal on Thursday.
Muhammad is averaging just one assist per game. Only twice has he gone over two assists in a game, and in eight games the former top recruit has collected zero assists.
Against the Bears, his lack of passing acumen was tested by an aggressive Cal defense.
"Last night what was tough for him, and I don't think he recognized it. ... Every time he got the ball, they were running another player at him and doubling," Howland said. "What they were saying is he had to pass the ball. It's something he hasn't seen before to that extent."
Contact the writer: rkartje@ocregister.com
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