Bruins Feel the Heat in 105-99 Loss to Ducks

Onward and downward, UCLA’s fall continues.

Taking to the road Thursday night, the Bruins ran into a red-hot Oregon team that shot 58.1% in the first half, 72.4% in the second and blitzed the Bruins, 105-99, in front of 9,134 at McArthur Court.

That’s four losses in a row and five in their last six Pacific 10 Conference games for the Bruins, who are 16-8 overall and apparently beginning to believe that they’re in trouble.

“We’re just going to have to come back in the Pac-10 tournament,” said forward Don MacLean, who scored 31 points and took 16 rebounds. “(Winning) that may be the only way we can get into the (NCAA) tournament.”

The Bruins hadn’t lost four consecutive conference games since the 1958-59 season and haven’t lost five in a row since the 1947-48 season.

They can equal that latter streak Saturday at Oregon State.

What will it take to bring them out of their funk?

“It’s nothing a couple of wins wouldn’t cure,” Coach Jim Harrick said. “We ran and opened up a little bit and were much, much more fluid than we have been.”

It was all for naught.

Oregon, which is 14-10 overall and 9-6 in the Pac-10, pulled into a fourth-place tie with UCLA in the conference race by shooting down the Bruins.

“They were unbelievable,” Harrick said of the Ducks, who made 65% of their shots overall and overcame a six-point second-half deficit to lead by as many as 15 points before the last few minutes turned into a parade to the free-throw line. “I can’t fault our effort at all. We played hard, but just ran into a team that couldn’t miss.

“We’re not fluid offensively like we need to be and like we were earlier in the season, but they just shot it. My land. We were in their face a lot of times, but they just shot the ball awfully well.”

Guard Terrell Brandon scored a season-high 31 points for Oregon, making 11 of 16 shots, and guard Kevin Mixon scored a career-high 25 points, making eight of 12 shots, including four of seven three-pointers, and providing what was believed to be the first four-point play in Duck history.

Mixon was fouled by Mitchell Butler as he made a three-point shot from the top of the key with 14:15 left, then added a free throw.

Forward Keith Reynolds scored 24 points, making 11 of 17 shots, and matched a career high with 11 rebounds.

The Ducks hadn’t scored so many points since the 1974-75 season, when they beat Villanova, 116-77, and hadn’t scored 100 points in a game since the 1981-82 season, when they beat UC Riverside, 100-89.

“When they shoot the ball like that, it gets the crowd going and it would be tough for anybody to beat them,” MacLean said.

UCLA, which made 52% of its shots, has been outshot in each of its last four games after being outshot only three times in its first 20.

But, said MacLean: “It wasn’t our performance taking us out of it, like against Cal and Stanford (last week). It was the other team just playing a lot better than we did. Not that we played badly.”

Darrick Martin matched a season high by scoring 18 points for UCLA, Tracy Murray scored 15 and Trevor Wilson scored 12.

Harrick called Oregon the Pac-10’s most improved team.

Last month, in a 79-62 loss to UCLA in Pauley Pavilion, the Ducks made only 35.7% of their shots. Only Cal State Fullerton, which made 31.4% in an 87-75 loss at Pauley, has shot worse against UCLA this season.

But the Ducks, who won at Washington State and Washington last week for their first sweep of a conference trip since 1984, came out this time and made 10 of their first 13 shots, all but one of them by Brandon and Reynolds, to open a 22-16 lead.

UCLA answered with a 7-0 run and neither team led by more than three points the rest of the half, which ended with the Bruins leading, 46-43.

MacLean, who made only eight of 23 shots last week in the losses to Cal and Stanford, made six of 11 in the first half, including four on transition layups, and led the Bruins with 15 points.

And freshman Zan Mason, who hadn’t played in three weeks, provided a spark off the bench, contributing four points, a rebound and an assist in six minutes. Last month, he had eight rebounds against the Ducks.

Reynolds scored 14 first-half points; Brandon had 13.

Bruin Notes

UCLA will be invited to play Michigan State next season at Auburn Hills, Mich., in a game to benefit the homeless, said the game’s promoter, Sonny Vaccaro. A scheduling conflict, however, might prevent the Bruins from playing in the game, Coach Jim Harrick said. A similar game last month, matching Louisiana State and Notre Dame, raised $125,000 for Comic Relief, Vaccaro said. . . . Trevor Wilson took six rebounds to move past Willie Naulls and into fourth place on the Bruins’ all-time list.

Pete Newell, former California coach and a consultant to the Cleveland Cavaliers, upon hearing that several thousand fans walked out Sunday during UCLA’s 70-69 loss to Stanford: “When you’ve been eating caviar and the top part of the steak, you don’t want to go to ground hamburger. It’s pretty hard to live with that. Their expectations are unrealistic. Nobody has a birthright to win.” . . . UCLA had won seven in a row against Oregon. . . . UCLA is 5-6 on the road and has lost five of its last seven road games.