UCLA staggers past Stanford, 76-71

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UCLA let Stanford hang on through the entire game Thursday night -- much the way the Bruins are hanging onto their Pac-10 championship dreams.

The last time these teams met it wasn’t even close. UCLA won at home 97-63 last month but only escaped Thursday with a 76-71 victory. Sure, this round was at The Farm -- but that’s no excuse. Normally, the Bruins would be firing on all cylinders this late in the season. That clearly isn’t happening.

UCLA is underperforming. Their roster is chalk full of players who made All American lists and will sign NBA contracts. They seem soft in the middle though. last year. Otherwise, their play has little resemblance to the team of 12 months ago. Kevin Love was able to get lean and mean before moving away from Westwood. This year’s Bruins must do the same or they won’t be going anywhere late in March.

Against Stanford, UCLA again shot better than 50% from the field. They also gave up close to 50%. UCLA isn’t going to pull a page out of Wake Forest’s playbook and speed up the game (though it might be fun to see), they don’t have one mega-star to carry the team, and they won’t get any more time than the three remaining regular season games and the conference tournament.

UCLA must get tougher on the defensive end of the court with a man-to-man scheme that will require each player to take it personally -- which seemed to be a theme in the build up to this weekend’s games. The Bruins have few chances left to show it.

The positives to take away from tonight are also big question marks for the future. UCLA would not have won if it weren’t for a big first half from Josh Shipp and a big second half from Alfred Aboya. Coach Ben Howland has repeatedly said how proud he is of his seniors’ performance, but also acknowledged that the team will look even younger next season. No time to worry about that now, though.

Early this year Aboya said this team’s identity would be built around the freshmen. Maybe he was right. Both are good, but not quite up to expectations.

-- Adam Rose