Aboya says he’ll play Thursday

Alfred Aboya, who sat out UCLA’s upset loss to Washington on Saturday because of a bruised left knee, said Tuesday that he participated in “90%” of practice and, as far as the Bruins’ quarterfinal game Thursday in the Pacific 10 Conference tournament goes, “I’m playing.”

Aboya, the sophomore center from Cameroon who has had three knee surgeries over the last three years, said he did everything at practice Tuesday “but conversion defense and the last part of practice, which was playing motion.”

As far as protecting his knee or playing with any fear of further injury, Aboya said that wouldn’t happen.

“I don’t want that to get in my head,” he said. “I just want to go play and forget about it.”

Aboya had an X-ray at the University of Washington on Friday and at UCLA on Monday and neither showed any structural damage. Aboya said the injury happened in the first half against Washington State on Thursday.

“It kind of hurt in the first minute, I couldn’t run,” he said. “I was screaming for a substitution and nobody saw me. Then it got better, but it started hurting after the game.”

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Point guard Darren Collison is 11 of 40 from the field (27.5%) and one of nine from three-point range (11%) over the last four games, including a two-for-15 effort in UCLA’s loss to Washington. It’s also a significant drop off from his season-long performances -- overall from the field he’s 125 of 256 (48.8%) and from three-point distance 42 of 90 for a Pac-10 leading 46.7%.

Collison said he took extra shots before Tuesday’s practice and planned some more today.

Coach Ben Howland didn’t fault Collison taking shots.

“He’s been taking pretty good shots,” Howland said. “They’re just not falling at the moment. But Darren’s had an exceptional year. Go with the numbers. He led us to a 15-3 regular-season [conference] mark as a point guard, the most important position on the basketball team.”

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Arron Afflalo was selected by the United States Basketball Writers Assn. as the District 9 player of the year. Also on the all-district team were Collison; Nick Young of USC, Bobby Brown of Cal State Fullerton, Brandon Heath of San Diego State, Aaron Brooks of Oregon, Sean Denison of Santa Clara, Derrick Low of Washington State, Rodney Stuckey of Eastern Washington and Marcus Williams of Arizona. Tony Bennett of Washington State was voted coach of the year.

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diane.pucin@latimes.com