Time, place not on UCLA’s side in NCAA tournament

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Ben Howland checked his watch impatiently.

Time couldn’t move fast enough before the buzzer.

Now it was moving too fast.

After beating Virginia Commonwealth by a nail-biting, lead-blowing, 65-64 final, a reporter asked the UCLA coach if he had thought about Villanova, his next opponent in the NCAA tournament.

‘Yeah,’ Howland said in his best I-don’t-want-to-answer-this voice. ‘I’ve thought about the fact that we’re playing here in 36 hours and 25 minutes.’

There will be no rest for the road-weary. The Bruins made the longest trip of any of the 65 teams in the Big Dance, over 2,700 miles from Westwood to Wachovia. Their next opponent made the shortest.

Earlier that night, Villanova secured their spot in the second round by defeating American before a clearly partisan Philadelphia crowd. If that didn’t make the Wildcats feel comfortable enough, they got to use their own locker room in the Wachovia Center. Their regular locker room.

‘This is going to be a true road game in the NCAA tournament,’ mused Howland.

This year, Villanova only played three times in the large arena that sits just 16 miles from their campus. They would normally visit more often, but NCAA tournament organizers will not send a team to the same court where they played more than three home games that season.

Rather than risk a UCLA-like journey, the Wildcats simply scheduled a pair of games across the parking lot at the soon-to-be-demolished Spectrum.

Back in their Wachovia locker room, Wildcat players insisted they were operating with a road-mentality. They also happened to be sitting under several signs stamped with the team’s mantras and school’s logo. Not just any signs. Steel signs. Bolted into the cement walls.

Case adjourned. Homecourt in session.

That doesn’t bode well for the Bruins, who went 16-2 in Pauley Pavilion this season but are just 10-6 outside of it.

Ultimately, time may be a bigger factor than place. UCLA tends to excel when given a few days to prepare (see: late season drubbings of Washington, USC, Cal, and WSU), but struggles with a short turnaround (examples: losses to Arizona State, at Washington, at Arizona, to Washington State, and against USC in the Pac-10 tournament).

UCLA is on the clock. If they’re not ready for Saturday’s game, they’ll have more time than they want until the next one.

-- Adam Rose