Harrick Cries Foul When Bruins Fall

For more than 11 months, UCLA Coach Jim Harrick stewed over a loss last January to Notre Dame, a disheartening defeat in which the Bruins squandered a 13-point lead at Pauley Pavilion.

So, imagine Harrick’s distaste for Sunday’s 86-84 loss at Notre Dame’s Joyce Athletic and Convocation Center, a surprisingly similar defeat in which the Bruins wasted a 14-point lead against a struggling Irish team that had lost three consecutive games and played without its best player.

“I’m over it,” Harrick snapped afterward, unconvincingly.

UCLA, even as it built its first-half advantage, seemed on the verge of collapse, its inside players picking up fouls at an alarming rate.

By the time the game ended, the Bruins’ Trevor Wilson had fouled out, five of his teammates had finished with four fouls and Notre Dame had attempted 48 free throws, two shy of a school record.

The Irish made 32, including two by reserve swingman Jamere Jackson with 10 seconds left that provided the winning margin.

Equally important, the Irish meticulously exploited the situation, feeding the ball inside to 6-foot-9, 230-pound Keith Robinson, who was held without a point in the first half but finished with 21, making all nine of his field-goal attempts.

All but two were layups.

“When all our big men were in foul trouble, we kind of had our hands in our pockets,” Wilson said. “There wasn’t much we could do once he got the ball down low--except hope that he’d miss.”

It wasn’t enough.

The Bruins caved in midway through the game, during a 30-5 Irish spurt that encompassed the last 4 1/2 minutes of the first half and the first five minutes of the second, turning UCLA’s 14-point lead into a nine-point deficit.

The Bruins made only one field goal during the span, missing their last seven attempts of the first half and all but one of their first seven in the second.

“I thought, quite frankly, that we lost our poise a little bit,” Harrick said. “We got frustrated at some of the calls that were made.

“It’s not so bad when the other team makes your kids frustrated. But it wasn’t the other team that made our kids frustrated.”

Not exclusively, anyway.

Irish Coach Digger Phelps, whose team improved to 2-3 while handing UCLA its first loss in five games, said of the Irish run, which brought life to a crowd of 10,717: “We were just due to explode some time on somebody. And from that point on, we had control of the game.”

The Irish, however, almost let it get away.

Wilson, who led UCLA with a season-high 29 points, scored 12 during a late 14-6 run by the Bruins, including two on a running bank shot in the lane that pulled the Bruins even at 84-84 with 22 seconds left.

Twelve seconds later, however, Wilson left Robinson to cut off Jackson’s drive to the basket. He made contact with the Irish senior as Jackson attempted to stop outside the lane.

The foul sent Jackson to the line and Wilson to the bench.

When it was suggested to Wilson that the contact seemed incidental, he said: “I would agree, but what can I say? They called (a foul).”

Added Harrick, showing his displeasure with the officiating of a crew from the Mid-American Conference: “A lot of incidentals today, pal. They shot 48 of them.”

With Wilson out of the game and no timeouts remaining, sophomore guard Darrick Martin was asked to bail out the Bruins.

After Jackson made his free throws, Martin brought the ball up court and, as time ran out, threw up a three-point shot from beyond the top of the key that glanced off the front of the rim.

Harrick’s preference would have been a drive to the basket.

Martin, who missed on a last-second, three-point shot in last season’s 82-79 loss to the Irish, said: “I think I should have gone to the basket. I had (my defender) beat, but I was going for the win.”

Harrick was in no mood to give credit to the Irish, who have opened the season without LaPhonso Ellis, a sophomore forward who is academically ineligible until the end of the semester.

Last season, Ellis scored 24 points against UCLA.

“We got beat last year,” Harrick said. “We didn’t get beat today. We lost the game, but we didn’t get beat.

“Forty-eight foul shots? You expect kids to overcome that? You can’t overcome that. I don’t know any team in the world that could overcome that.”

UCLA Notes

UCLA attempted 23 foul shots, making 15. . . . Notre Dame established a school record when it attempted 50 foul shots against Kansas in an NCAA tournament game on March 15, 1975. . . . UCLA once attempted 61 free throws, making 47 in a game against USC on March 10, 1956. . . . During its decisive run, Notre Dame made seven of 10 free throws, three times missing the front end during one-and-one free-throw situations at the end of the first half.

Said Notre Dame Coach Digger Phelps: “They’re very vulnerable to coming at you too quickly and leaving their feet too quickly and we did a good job of creating the foul situation.” . . . UCLA made 52.5% of its shots, making more than 44.8% for the first time in five games, and Notre Dame made 54.2%, the first time a UCLA opponent has made more than 44.4%.