No. 2 UCLA Nearly Chokes on CS Fullerton : College basketball: Bruins escape, 86-80, to remain undefeated, but victory doesn’t leave a good taste in their mouths.

After sustaining itself with nothing but junk this month--cupcake after cupcake since its season-opening victory over Indiana--UCLA bit into something more substantial Monday night at Pauley Pavilion, and almost gagged.

An aggressive effort by Cal State Fullerton almost toppled the second-ranked Bruins, but UCLA rallied at the end for an 86-80 victory, improving to 6-0 before 7,569.

They had come to Westwood expecting another blowout.

So, perhaps, had the Bruins.

“I don’t know what’s going on with our team,” UCLA’s Mitchell Butler said. “Maybe it’s good we’re not peaking real early, and not playing way up there, where we have almost nowhere to go (but down).

“But we’ve definitely got to change something. We’ve got to play even halfway better than we played tonight, because tonight was not a very good effort by our team. A lot of guys didn’t look into it.

“It just feels really weird. That was not an impressive win whatsoever. They should have had the game, the way they played.

“It feels like a loss.”

It nearly was.

Fullerton, 3-3 coming in with losses against Butler, Eastern Illinois and Pepperdine, overcame a 12-point second-half deficit, making 58.8% of its shots after halftime.

The Titans last led by 74-73 after forward Agee Ward, a 6-foot-6 senior from Washington High who made 14 of 18 shots and led Fullerton with 30 points, scored on a spinning shot in the lane with 3:19 to play.

But freshman guard Tyus Edney then made a three-point shot from the right wing, starting an 8-0 run by UCLA that stifled the Titans.

A steal by Butler led to a layup by Tracy Murray, who scored off a touch pass from Don MacLean, and a steal by Edney led to a driving layup by Darrick Martin, who was fouled as he made his shot.

Martin added a free throw to give UCLA an 81-74 lead.

Before he did, a UCLA cheerleader took a microphone out onto the floor during a timeout and asked, “Who’s going to the Final Four?”

The answer was supposed to be UCLA, but some wondered.

UCLA Coach Jim Harrick had suggested before the game that the Bruins’ lofty ranking really wasn’t indicative of anything they’d accomplished, saying that it was based almost solely on their 87-72 victory over Indiana last month.

“Everybody is judging our team off the first game, off beating one team,” he said. “And any time you beat one team, maybe they weren’t ready to play or maybe they had some problems and didn’t play a very good game. Other than that, we’ve had some games that haven’t really tested us yet.”

The Titans weren’t expected to, either, but they did.

“They figured we were nothing, that they would polish us off easily,” Titan forward Bruce Bowen said of the Bruins after scoring 21 points and taking nine rebounds. “But that didn’t happen.”

UCLA went out and missed 17 of its first 26 shots and fell behind, 27-22, before rallying to open a 42-35 halftime lead. The Bruins moved ahead, 53-41, before Fullerton went on a 15-2 run.

“You have to give a lot of credit to Fullerton,” Harrick said. “They came in here and really played a great game. They came in here and shot 58% (in the second half) and outscrapped us and outhustled us.

“Everything gave us trouble. There wasn’t one thing I could say we were pleased about, except the end of the game--the final score.”

Bruin Notes

Tracy Murray missed six of his first eight shots, made eight of his last 10 and led UCLA with a season-high 28 points. Darrick Martin had 12 points, nine assists and no turnovers in 33 minutes. In two starts, he has 16 assists and no turnovers. . . . UCLA Coach Jim Harrick, on Murray, who is averaging 24 points, seven rebounds and has made 60% of his shots: “Playing in the Pan American Games really helped him. It helped him to play with other gifted players, learning how they play and how unselfish you need to be to be a complete player.”

Fullerton bothered UCLA with a zone defense during the second half. “We wanted to try a little of the zone in the first half, and we called it after a free throw, but we missed the free throw, so we didn’t go to it,” Titan Coach John Sneed said. “And that turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because they had nothing to talk over at halftime.”

Harrick, on USC’s 79-77 upset victory Saturday over Ohio State: “We found out USC is no cakewalk. They play very, very well in the Sports Arena.” UCLA hasn’t won at the Sports Arena since the 1988-89 season. . . . UCLA shot only 46.9%--38.2% in the first half.