PACIFIC 10 TOURNAMENT : UCLA Takes a Real Pounding in 95-86 Defeat by Stanford

Any drama surrounding Stanford’s quest to end several decades of frustration against UCLA disappeared Saturday at the Forum amid a hailstorm of layups and dunks by the 12th-ranked Cardinal.

Stanford turned the overmatched Bruins inside out, building a 21-point first-half lead before settling for a 95-86 victory in the semifinals of the Pacific 10 Conference basketball tournament.

The victory was the 11th straight for Stanford, matching its longest winning streak in 47 years, and improved the Cardinal’s record to 26-5 going into today’s 1 p.m. final against No. 1-ranked Arizona.

It also ended a 37-year drought for the Cardinal, which lost 43 consecutive games to the Bruins in Los Angeles, last beating them here on Jan. 5, 1952, at the UCLA Men’s Gym.

But Saturday’s game lacked suspense.

In fact, much of the crowd of 10,565 was gone by the end, having walked out not long after Stanford increased its 19-point halftime lead to 25 points in the first three minutes of the second half.

What went wrong for UCLA (20-9), which awaits a probable invitation to the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament?

Basically, the wide-bodied Cardinal pounded on the Bruins.

“It’s hard to envision a stronger, more physical team in the country than Stanford,” UCLA Coach Jim Harrick said. “They knock your socks off.”

Indeed, as it ravaged the Bruins in a first half that ended with Stanford leading, 48-29, the Cardinal scored 30 points on layups or dunks, often simply brushing aside the lighter Bruins.

“They’re stronger than us, obviously,” said Pooh Richardson, who scored a season-high 24 points for UCLA. “They got the ball down low and got some great interior passing from their big men.”

And not much resistance from the Bruins.

“They just shot layups,” Richardson said.

That’s about the gist of it.

Stanford made 63.4% of its shots, a season high for a UCLA opponent.

“The first 30 minutes of the game, we played extremely well,” Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery said. “We were ready to play mentally and did exactly the thing we wanted to do.”

And what was that?

“We wanted to keep pressure on them by taking it inside and making their big people play against our big people,” Montgomery said. “We also wanted to create some contact with aggressive offensive play by taking it to them and seeing if we could create some foul trouble because depth is a problem for them.”

Also, the Cardinal put the clamps on UCLA’s leading scorer, Don MacLean, holding the freshman scoreless in the first half.

Meanwhile, Stanford freshman Adam Keefe scored a season-high 22 points, making six of nine shots, and equaled a season high with 11 rebounds.

Guard Todd Lichti led the Cardinal with 23 points, making seven of nine shots, and also had eight rebounds and five assists.

UCLA’s Trevor Wilson scored 22 points but had only six points and one rebound in the first half, and although MacLean finished with 14 points, all of them came after the outcome had been decided.

Obviously, the Bruin forwards did not enjoy much success at the defensive end, and neither did center Kevin Walker.

“We knew they were going to pound it inside because they’re a very strong team,” Wilson said. “(But) when we doubled the low post, they either dished it to the man cutting to the basket or to the man on the weak side.

“We didn’t do a good job of rotating and they got a lot of easy shots.”

UCLA turned the ball over on each of its first four possessions, fell behind and never caught up, making eight turnovers in the first eight minutes as Stanford bolted to a 19-7 lead.

“They took us out of everything,” Harrick said. “They came out physical and strong, pushing and shoving. And we don’t react well to that.”

Is Stanford the most physical team in the country?

“Bob Knight thinks so,” Montgomery said, referring to the Indiana coach, who disparaged the Cardinal’s aggressive style of play after the Hoosiers beat Stanford in the preseason National Invitation Tournament.

Harrick thinks so, too.

“Great minds think alike,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery, obviously, is not fond of the label.

“Physical, to me, has more than one connotation,” he said. “We’ve got guys that are big and carry some extra weight.

“It would be fun to have guys that could run a whole lot faster, I suppose, but this is the team we have and we do what we do best.”

And, for the first time in almost four decades, Stanford’s best was good enough to beat UCLA in Los Angeles.

Bruin Notes

Pooh Richardson had five assists, enabling him to pass former Arizona guard Russell Brown and become the Pacific 10 Conference’s all-time leader with 814 assists. Brown, whose career ended in 1981, had 810. . . . Richardson also established a UCLA assist record for the third consecutive season. He has 217 assists in 29 games. He had 210 last season, 208 his sophomore season.

Stanford has won 13 of 14 games, including 11 straight since Jan. 29, when it lost to Arizona, 72-52, at Tucson. The Cardinal won 12 consecutive games in the 1941-42 season, when it won the NCAA championship in its only appearance in the NCAA tournament. It won 11 in a row in the 1961-62 season.