Afflalo finds himself in a bad spot

Arron Afflalo got one thing right Thursday.

After a performance he glumly called the worst of his career, he wasn’t entitled to add his voice to the gloom that enveloped UCLA’s locker room after the Bruins’ 76-69 overtime loss to a decidedly unspectacular California team in the quarterfinals of the Pacific Life Pac-10 tournament.

Afflalo, the newly minted conference player of the year, couldn’t explain his season-low three points and his one-for-seven shooting in a game that called for so much more.

His failure gave him no currency to pick apart his teammates’ errors in another slow start that turned into another earnest but inadequate comeback and a loss that dims the Bruins’ NCAA tournament prospects.

“I didn’t really feel I was in a position to say much tonight. It was out of respect for them,” said Afflalo, who averaged 17.2 points and 13 shots in the team’s first 30 games but was never a factor on Thursday.

“If I couldn’t go out there and give it my all, I’m in no position to try and correct them and get on them about things they’re doing. For me personally, it’s just about getting in practice the next day and being who I am once again and trying to help my team.”

It was a stunningly bad effort by Afflalo, who has been the catalyst for the Bruins’ offense this season and is likely to try his luck in the NBA draft this summer.

He had scored in double figures 29 straight times, a streak that included a 25-point game against the Golden Bears at Berkeley in January and a 13-point effort against them last month at Pauley Pavilion.

However, he was 0 for 2 in the first half with three fouls, and Coach Ben Howland left him on the bench to open the second half. It might have been intended as a wake-up call, but it didn’t end Afflalo’s nightmare. He made only one field goal the rest of the way and extended his failure at the free-throw line, making one of four, a sad footnote to his third consecutive subpar performance.

Asked if he struggled to get the ball or waited in vain for it to come to him, he grimaced. “I don’t want to force the issue. I don’t think that’s my job to try and force the issue,” he said.

“I do feel like when I’m going, my team’s playing better when I’m playing better.”

That extends to defense too. Afflalo showed little of his usual vigor against Cal guard Ayinde Ubaka, who scored a game-high 29 points. Afflalo had held Ubaka scoreless in the teams’ first meeting and to 10 points when the Bruins completed a regular-season sweep on Feb. 22.

Howland wrote it off as a bad game for Afflalo and predicted the junior guard “will bounce back and have a great practice on Saturday and be ready to go.”

The Bruins might have been playing for the Pac-10 title on Saturday, not practicing at Pauley Pavilion, if Afflalo had played even a semi-decent game Thursday.

“Arron is our leader, and when he’s not doing it, other people have to step up,” said Luc Richard Mbah a Moute.

Josh Shipp seized the moment to score 19 points, and Darren Collison scored 20, with six assists. But in erasing a Cal lead that ballooned to 16 points in the first half, the Bruins depleted their energy and were outscored, 15-8, in overtime.

“Mentally I’m not sure where we are as a team. Me, personally, I need to get myself back into the right mental state to help my team win,” Afflalo said.

“My teammates did a good job,” he added, singling out Shipp, Alfred Aboya and Lorenzo Mata. “Those guys did a great job of fighting back and getting us back in it.”

They fought short-handed because Afflalo wasn’t ready to lead them.

He knew it, and he minced no words while being quizzed by reporters who crowded around his locker after the game. For that, at least, he deserves praise.

“I need to find a way to get involved because my team looks to me for a lot of different things. If I’m not providing that, we’ll struggle as a unit,” he said. “This is a team that needs everybody to be at their best. Especially me, with the most experience....

“This is definitely not a good feeling. We need to get back to whatever we were doing that was allowing us to be who we are as a team and as individuals, so that we can be the No. 1 team in the country once again.”

They may not be seeded No. 1 in the West region now, let alone a contender for the national championship.

“We need to be a No. 1 seed in the minds of us. I’m not quite sure where it will be on paper,” Afflalo said. “Whatever it is we’ll have to do our best job of being the best team we could be, six games in a row, one game at a time.”

How good the Bruins will be depends on Afflalo. And he knows it.

“My character will be tested as to how I bounce back from a situation like this,” he said.

“I don’t want the last memories of this season, which has been great thus far, to be overshadowed by this. I’m going to do my best to make it right.”

The Bruins can’t get by with less.

helene.elliott@latimes.com