Arizona Stomps on UCLA : College basketball: The Wildcats overwhelm Bruins, 98-74, to cut Pac-10 lead to one game.

What’s blue and gold with perfect hearing? It’s the UCLA basketball team, listening to some pretty big footsteps coming up from behind.

On Saturday, they were the shoes of the 15th-ranked Arizona Wildcats, who walked all over the Bruins, 98-74, and closed to within one game of first-place UCLA in the Pacific 10 Conference race.

Yes, the neck holes in those blue jerseys probably feel a little smaller. At least this is what Arizona Coach Lute Olson hopes.

“All I know now is that they have a one-game lead now and things tend to tighten up when you know a loss could put it in a tie,” Olson said. “Yes, it just got a little tighter.”

It got that way for No. 8 UCLA, 18-3 and 11-2 in the Pac-10, on a day when the Bruins gave up more points, more field goals and had fewer rebounds than in any other game this season.

You do that, UCLA Coach Jim Harrick said, and you can’t expect to win.

“What can you say when you get beat?” Harrick said.

Well, if you’re UCLA, a good place to start is to figure out what went wrong with Ed O’Bannon. The Wildcats held O’Bannon to a season-low nine points, the first time this season O’Bannon has failed to score in double figures.

Olson positioned Ray Owes in front of O’Bannon, then ran another defender at O’Bannon as soon as he got the ball. It’s not new strategy, but the Wildcats (21-4, 10-3) did it better than anyone else this season.

Owes outplayed O’Bannon with 20 points and 13 rebounds. O’Bannon made four of 10 shots and offered only a few words of explanation.

“They just played a good defensive game,” he said. “Yeah, this is discouraging. They just outplayed us.”

Tyus Edney picked up the offensive slack with 21 points, but the only other UCLA player in double figures was George Zidek with 18 in only 29 minutes because of foul trouble.

Zidek didn’t sound too happy about following up a victory against Arizona State with what happened Saturday.

“How can you feel about it after you lost a game by 30 points?” he said. “It’s going to be tough to forget about this.”

A sellout crowd of 14,007 at McKale Center probably doesn’t want to forget any of it, especially the part about Damon Stoudamire and Khalid Reeves.

Edney and Cameron Dollar had major troubles with Stoudamire, as Shon Tarver did with Reeves.

Edney, Dollar and Tarver spent the afternoon running around screens trying to get closer to the Wildcat guards. Most of the time they were too late.

Reeves finished with 23 points and Stoudamire had 22, making four of eight three-pointers.

Edney said even if UCLA’s defense had played better, it probably wouldn’t have made any difference.

“I don’t think anyone could have beaten them today,” he said.

Maybe so. UCLA certainly couldn’t, not with O’Bannon slumping, Tarver shooting three for 11 and the Bruin defense going off the deep end.

The Bruins trailed by 10 at the half despite a 25-point flurry by Stoudamire and Reeves. Arizona’s lead was 50-40 early in the second half when the game got out of hand in a hurry.

Arizona scored on 18 of its next 21 possessions and the Wildcats’ lead was 82-60 with 8:21 to go.

All that was left for Arizona was to figure out what catching UCLA and winning the Pac-10 title would mean as far as the NCAA tournament goes.

“I really think that the No. 1 seed in the West could go with that,” Olson said.

Then again, maybe not. The NCAA tournament committee is not bound to seed the Pac-10 champion No. 1 in the West.

UCLA’s chances to stay in the West or get shipped to another region probably weren’t helped by another blowout defeat on national television--15 points at California, 16 points at Notre Dame and now 24 points at Arizona.

That means in three national TV appearances, the Bruins lost by an average of 18.3 points. This is not good exposure.

Harrick cautioned against getting too worked up about it.

“No one will know in March,” he said. “We still only have three losses. Not many teams in the country have that.”

In the locker room after the game, Harrick reminded his team of one very important fact.

“We’re still in first place,” he said.

Yes, but by half as much as before.