Bruins Get Too Hot for Arizona State

Arizona State’s improving basketball team drew 12,762 to the University Activity Center Thursday night, its largest crowd for an opponent other than Arizona in more than 10 years, but UCLA sent many of the fair-weather fans home early.

The Bruins dominated the second half, making 73.9% of their shots to win easily over the Sun Devils, 82-68.

Tracy Murray scored 22 points and Don MacLean scored 21, making all but one of his nine shots, as UCLA improved to 13-1, equaling its best start since the 1974-75 season, when it won 14 of its first 15 games and the last of its 10 national championships under John Wooden.

The Bruins are 2-0 in the Pacific 10 Conference as they head to Tucson, where they will face Arizona on Saturday night.

“We just could not sustain their effort,” Arizona State Coach Bill Frieder said after the Sun Devils fell to 10-3 and 1-2. “Murray and MacLean--they’re outstanding. We did a good job preparing--we were ready to go. We were just overmatched and not good enough.”

UCLA overcame a 10-point first-half deficit, trailed by a point at halftime, then took control after Isaac Austin, Arizona State’s 6-foot-10 senior center, picked up his fourth foul with 17:01 left.

With Austin on the bench, the Bruins outscored Arizona State, 15-4.

Then, after he returned, Austin was hardly a factor, mostly moving out of the way whenever a Bruin drove toward the basket.

“In the second half, he played a lot more tentatively than he did in the first half,” UCLA’s Darrick Martin said of Austin, who had 13 points and eight rebounds. “We were able to take it right to him.”

On consecutive possessions after Arizona State closed to within eight points, UCLA’s Keith Owens beat Austin back down the court, throwing down a two-handed dunk the first time and scoring on a layup the second.

Arizona State trailed after that, 71-61, and never got closer.

“They played with tremendous intensity early in the game,” UCLA Coach Jim Harrick said of the Sun Devils, “but they got into foul trouble, and I think that took a little bit of the edge off.”

Said Martin, who scored 14 points, made four of five shots and had six assists: “Once we get the ball inside to Don MacLean and Tracy Murray, they’re hard to stop when you’ve got no fouls.

“When you’ve got four fouls, it’s impossible.”

Arizona State made only 31.4% of its shots in the second half and only 35.6% overall, its worst shooting of the season. Its guards, Lynn Collins and Tarence Wheeler, combined to make only seven of 27 shots, with Collins missing 13 of 17, including all seven of his three-point attempts.

UCLA matched a season high by making 65.2%.

“They just get the ball to the right people at the right time and shoot it in,” Frieder said of the Bruins. “They’re averaging 100 points a game and that’s no fluke. They’re an outstanding team.

“But the thing that makes them a better team than in past years is that their defense is so much better.”

Arizona State, too, is a much better team than it was last season, as the Sun Devils showed on their first possession, when freshman Jamal Faulkner rose high above the rim to take an alley-oop pass.

Faulkner missed a dunk, but Austin scored on a follow.

Midway through the half, the Sun Devils put together a 12-2 run, opening a 28-18 lead.

UCLA answered with a 15-4 run to a 33-32 lead.

Wheeler then hit a three-point shot from the right wing, and UCLA trailed at halftime for only the third time this season.

It was 42-42 when Austin ran over MacLean, then sat down with his fourth foul.

About a minute later, Faulkner drew his fourth foul.

“You can’t have any five-minute spans where you don’t score, and you can’t have any foolish fouls if you’re going to stay with a team like that,” Frieder said. “That’s a very good team.”

Good enough to win at Arizona?

“They’re capable of winning anywhere,” Frieder said.

Bruin Notes

UCLA was also 13-1 in 1977-78 and 1982-83. . . . Tracy Murray suffered a hyper-extended left knee at the end of the game. It was not considered serious. . . . Only UC Irvine, which made 32.6% of its shots in a 134-101 loss, has shot worse against UCLA this season.

Jeff Bronner of UC Riverside, a former UCLA walk-on who transferred last year, told the Riverside Press-Enterprise: “I wanted to be a player again, not some joke--not somebody for people to laugh at at the end of the game. I want to be out there when the game’s not over. People may not understand how I could possibly leave a team like UCLA, but when I’m out there playing and the crowd is still there, and the coaches are still yelling, it makes it all worth it.” Bronner is averaging 5.8 points and 11.8 minutes a game for UCR.