ucla v. arizona

UCLA beat Arizona 82-75 in the Pac-10 regular season home opener at Pauley Pavilion tonight before a crowd of 11,453. And they did it the hard way, almost blowing a 22 point lead which they had for most of the game based largely on the shooting of Jerome Moiso's 21 points, Baron Davis' 20 points, Earl Watson's 13 points, and Dan Gadzuirc's 13 points. In fact, every Bruin who suited up scored: Rico Hines had 3, Sean Farnham had 2, Travis Reed had 4, Ray Young 3, Ryan Bailey 4, and Matt Barnes 2.

Darren "Mats" Matsubara (EBO coach); Etop Udo-Ema (Reebok Compton Tip Off Classic, Rim Rattler); Jerry West & his son; Travon Bryant of Long Beach Jordan; E.J. Harris of Crenshaw with his dad Edmond, Sr.; Joe Shipp of Fairfax; Russell Otis, coach of Dominguez; the LA Times' Eric Sondheimer (who told us he was not working but was just there to watch the game for fun); Ruben Douglas' coach from Bell-Jeff, Eli Essa who was there to watch his former protege'; Alex Holmes and Chad Garson of Harvard-Westlake; Darren Tarlow of Chaminade; Venice coach Dave Goosen and player Glen McGowan, and one pro agent who told us that Michael Olowakandi will be signing a contract in the next day or two to play in Europe. . . remember, you read it here first.

As previously announced in all of the papers, JaRon Rush did not play and did not suit up, and he sat on the bench in street clothes. After the game Coach Lavin explained to reporters in the locker room, "We really missed Jaron, and he missed playing, but when you miss two practices and violate team rules there have to be consequences, and he got to pay the price by not playing tonight. All the guys were really supportive of the fact that he was homesick, and they really love him a lot, so they wanted to show that they were there for him, but when you violate team rules, you're just not going to play, and JaRon now understands this and so does the rest of the team."

The "rest of the team" was a veiled reference to Jerome Moiso and Dan Gadzuric who did not start, reportedly (although this wasn't confirmed by Coach Lavin) because they violated a team curfew on New Year's eve. But they both came into the game about midway through the first half, and it was at that point that UCLA solidified the lead which had been built by Baron Davis, Sean Farnham and Earl Watson in the first three minutes of the game when UCLA first led by 9 with 11:06 to play in the first half. UCLA's largest lead in the first half was 16 points and they went into the locker room leading 40-24 at that half.

The key to the first half was points off of transition and turnovers: UCLA's assist to turnovers was 10-6, whereas Arizona had only 4 assists and 11 turnovers in the first half. Arizona also shot miserably in the first half, shooting just 26.9% from the fieled and just 20% from three point range; UCLA on the other hand shot 53.3% in the first half from the field, and 33.64 from three point range.

Lute started Michael Wright (6'-7" Fr. F), Justin Wessel (6'-8" So. F), A.J. Bramlett (6'-10" Sr. C), Richard Jefferson (6'-6" Fr. F) and Jason Terry (6'-2" Sr. PG), and they all got significant minutes during the first half, but none of them really did much to speak of. Wright and Terry were the Wildcats' best shooters, each hitting 2-4 from the field, with Terry going 2-2 from the line, but other than them, Arizona shot very poorly in the first half. Justin Wessel was wearing a sort of abbreviated version of a Bill Lambier plastic face mask (actually it just looked like really bad fitting Oakley clear sunglasses) and it sure didn't help his shooting: In the first half he went 0-1 and only 3-5 from the line for a total of 3 points; Travis Wilson (6'-2" Fr. G) went 0-5 from the field in the first half; Bramlett shot 2-7, while Jefferson went 0-1. Eugene Edgerson shot 0-0 from the field, but made three out of four free throws for a total of 3 points, and in general just ended up pissing off most of the Bruins, to the point that Baron almost (yes, we said almost) just about smacked him at least one or two times. Edgerson seemed to be taking on the role of designated hitter, and it was the Bruins he was hitting, low, hard, in the back, when and where they weren't looking, and he got away with it a lot; ultimately he played the end of the game with four fouls, but was also largely ineffective, still winding up with only 3 points on the night. Ruben Douglas came in after about 15 minutes, and played pretty well, not really lighting it up, but hitting for 2 points in the first half off 1-4 shooting from the field.

And the most amazing statistic from the first half: UCLA trailed in rebounding by a margin of 22-14, and at the end of the game, the margin was 48-31. UCLA got killed on the boards, but somehow managed to win. And as we said before, while Arizona was managing to beat UCLA to the ball on the rebounds, they were unable to convert those boards into points. Instead it was UCLA's far better first half shooting which managed to give them a lead they would never relinquish.

UCLA started its ninth different lineup this year, and while it had everyone scratching their heads, we think we've got Lavin's strategy figured out, and this is it: Make everyone, including your own bench believe you don't have a clue, and don't know what you're doing. In this way, you'll fool not only the other teams' players, but also their entire coaching staff, and you'll get your normal starters so confused and concerned that they'll come off the bench so fired up that you'll be able to stretch out with a 22 point lead for most of the second half. Well, that's exactly what Coach Lavin did tonight, starting Rico Hines, Sean Farnham, Travis Reed, Earl Watson and Baron Davis. Farnham played surprisingly well, but his presence on the starting roster had a lot of people confused, including Arizona and Lute Olsen. One pro agent who was sitting near us remarked, "Isn't that Sean Farnham starting??? What's he doing starting against Arizona. " Well, yes, that was Sean Farnham, and he started and did a great job, hitting for UCLA's second basket of the night, a nice layup off a feed on the fast break transition from Earl Watson, who got the first of his team high 6 assists on the night.

The second half was really a lot more of the same, and Arizona never really threatened at all until the last minute of the game when they cut the lead to only 5 points with just 20 seconds left on the clock, with a layup from Wright off a Terry assist after Dan Gadzuric had fouled out. But Arizona was forced into a fouling mode just to get possession of the ball and Davis and Moiso hit two out of four free throws to give UCLA the final lead of 7 and the 82-75 win.

Overall UCLA ended up shooting 29-58 from the field (50%), 4-18 from three point range, and 66.7% (20-30) from the line. Arizona shot just 37.7% from the field, 4-13 (30.8% from three point range and 25-37 (67.6%) from the line. Michael Wright finished with 14, Wessel with three, Bramlett 15, Jefferson 11, Jason Terry 19, Edgerson 3, and Ruben Douglas had 10.

So UCLA's freshmen are better than Arizona's freshmen. At least for one night. Time will tell what will happen when these two teams matchup again in Tucson.