After a scary fall, Bruins’ TJ Leaf regains the spring in his step

Other than the thin brace cocooning his left ankle on Friday evening, TJ Leaf showed only one, tiny sign of the sprained ankle that had nearly dealt a serious blow to UCLA’s Final Four aspirations at the start of March.

Leaf began Friday’s Pac-12 tournament semifinal game against Arizona with a dunk on the first possession. As he ran back on defense, he paused near the foul line and gave his ankle a little wiggle, as if probing its stability.

Then he planted hard, set up on defense and grabbed a rebound.

A little more than a week ago, on March 1, Leaf had crawled to the baseline at Pauley Pavilion, slapping the court and grabbing his ankle during a game against Washington.

UCLA did not believe the sprain was severe, but even a small dent in Leaf’s production would have an outsized effect. Leaf leads the team with 16.2 points per game and, at 8.4 rebounds per game, he trails Thomas Welsh for the team lead in that category by a fraction. Would Leaf be healthy enough to help power an NCAA tournament run?

Leaf has calmed any fears in Las Vegas. A trace of the injury was difficult to detect on Thursday against USC. He played 33 minutes, made half of his field-goal attempts and scored 14 points with six rebounds.

UCLA Coach Steve Alford called the performance “tremendous.”

“We got 33 minutes, so we’ve got to get him some rest and treatment,” Alford said. “But great credit to the medical staff. Great credit to Shane [Besedick], our trainer, and then obviously TJ for doing the work to get back to be able to play as well as he played.”

He added: “That was big for us.”

Guard Isaac Hamilton said Leaf’s presence on Thursday opened the perimeter for UCLA’s shooters.

“We got a lot of inside-out,” Hamilton said. “We passed the ball to TJ, and they kind of doubled him when they went four guards, and they kicked it out and left me open.”

The next day, UCLA assistant coach Duane Broussard said maybe the only hitch was that Leaf was a little winded. Leaf had missed more than a week, some of which he spent on crutches and in a boot, and needed a few days to regain his conditioning.

But the postseason was no time to shorten the leading scorer’s workload.

More Vegas?

Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott indicated that the conference is very happy with the tournament in Las Vegas, where it has been held since 2013. Might football follow?

Mark Davis, owner of the NFL’s Oakland Raiders, has explored moving the team to Las Vegas, housed in a proposed $1.9-billion domed stadium on the Strip. If that deal gets done, it could entice the Pac-12 to relocate its football championship game from Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, which Scott said has been popular with players and coaches but hasn’t drawn consistent crowds.

“We don’t fill that venue right now, and I think that’s always going to be a challenge for us,” Scott said. “The drivability, the cost, the passion of the fans. But [it’s] something that we’re striving for.”

Scott kept the door ajar for a change of venue. In the past, he has mentioned Los Angeles as a possible destination after the completion of the Rams’ $2.6-billion stadium in Inglewood. He said the conference is also considering moving the game to campus sites.

A Las Vegas championship site would be attractive for many of the same reasons it has been successful as a basketball host: Easy transportation, with direct flights to most Pac-12 cities, and a venue that is within walking distance to Las Vegas’ bounteous hotels, restaurants and entertainment options.

“If the Raiders move here, they build something, certainly that would also be something we’d have to consider, would want to consider, given what the positive reaction of our fans have been around basketball,” Scott said.

zach.helfand@latimes.com

Follow Zach Helfand on Twitter @zhelfand