After Slow Start, UCLA Surges Past Long Beach State, 93-51 : College basketball: The Bruins improve to 4-0 with a 60-point second half after the 49ers try to control the game’s tempo.

Basketball players love to bring the ball upcourt slowly. They like it when an entire quarter at school is completed or they need to shave their heads again before they finish running a single play.

Sure they do.

Not at UCLA, they don’t.

“Every kid in America wants to run,” said Charles O’Bannon. “It’s the American dream.”

UCLA is trying hard to keep that dream alive. The Bruins had sort of a struggle for a while Saturday afternoon at Pauley Pavilion, where Long Beach State did a break overhaul on the Bruins, only to find it’s hard to stay in a slow game--or any other kind--when you can’t make a shot.

The 4-0 Bruins scored 60 points in the second half and beat the 49ers, 93-51, before 9,206, who saw two separate story lines play out on the same court.

Could the Bruins play a half-court offense without falling asleep?

Could Long Beach State make more shots than turnovers?

As it turned out, the Bruins did fairly well against 49er Coach Seth Greenberg’s well-designed but poorly executed game plan.

And if the Bruins see any more like it, which they certainly expect, they might know what to do.

“That’s the way we’re going to be scouted, I’m sure,” Charles O’Bannon said. “We just have to be ready to run our offense.”

Merely running doesn’t work sometimes. Take Saturday, for instance.

With 9:18 left in the first half, Long Beach trailed by only 16-12, largely because of a pressuring half-court defense and miserly offense that drained time off the clock. The Bruins looked shaky.

“We weren’t nervous, we just had to execute,” said UCLA’s Shon Tarver, who led all scorers with 16 points. “We couldn’t worry about them--we had to think about ourselves.”

From that point on, UCLA owned the game. Of course, Long Beach contributed by scoring three points the rest of the half, which ended with the Bruins finishing a 17-3 run and owning a 33-15 lead.

Whom to blame?

“Hopefully, it was a little bit our defense,” UCLA Coach Jim Harrick said.

For whatever reason, the 49ers made only 20 shots, committed 22 turnovers and quickly got squashed in the second half.

It was fun while it lasted, Greenberg said.

“We had them a little bit frustrated,” he said. “I think they’re going to be forced to play a lot more games like that.”

Greenberg is probably right, although the Bruins said that’s fine with them and that they really never were worried by the 49ers.

“If they had put the ball in the basket a little more, it might have been a little closer, but fortunately for us, they didn’t,” Ed O’Bannon said.

“It was a nice change for us, to set up and run our offense. It gave us a chance to see what we can do.”

Less than five minutes into the second half, UCLA’s lead was 50-20. And 10 minutes later, it was 75-39.

“It’s a killer to try to trade baskets with them,” Greenberg said. “When they get into transition, you give Ed and Charles running starts, it’s just too tough.”

Tarver’s 16 points led a balanced scoring attack that featured 15 points from Charles O’Bannon; 14 points, 10 rebounds, four assists and three blocked shots from Ed O’Bannon, 12 points and four assists from Tyus Edney and six assists in 17 minutes from freshman point guard Cameron Dollar.

Throw out the first 10 minutes and it was total domination. UCLA finished with a 46-22 edge in rebounds, shot 63.2% to Long Beach’s 36.4 and got points from 11 of the 13 players who played.

But Harrick knows you can’t throw out the first 10 minutes. It meant something, at least to him.

“I’m kind of glad it happened,” he said. “We need to sit back and realize it’s not going to be easy every time we step on the floor.”