Bruins Bend, Don’t Brake for Cardinals : College basketball: Bailey, Charles O’Bannon control boards, UCLA drives away a winner.

Toby Bailey and Charles O’Bannon, UCLA’s two all-purpose mid-sized models, took the Bruins on a high-speed, tight-cornering NCAA tournament test-drive Sunday.

And the Louisville Cardinals were the ones who came out of it with scratches and dings.

One week before tournament pairings are announced, against an aggressive Cardinal team searching for a way into the field, Bailey and O’Bannon led No. 1-ranked UCLA to a 91-73 victory before a Freedom Hall record crowd of 19,782.

“Teams don’t usually box out guards,” said Bailey, who had a game-high 11 rebounds, 17 points and a team- (and career-) high seven assists. “So I’m just trying to find an open path to the basket.

“I knew they were an athletic team, and usually athletic players just want to jump to the ball, they don’t box out.”

But what happens if either he or forward O’Bannon don’t get the rebound, leaving only one guard back to defend?

“I usually get it,” Bailey said.

Sunday, Bailey and O’Bannon, who combined for 11 offensive rebounds, usually did.

Bailey, a 6-foot-5 freshman, and O’Bannon, a 6-6 1/2 sophomore, knifed to the backboard against Louisville’s three-guard lineup, hauled in loose balls, tossed down point-blank baskets, and together scored 33 points, grabbed 20 rebounds and handed out 13 assists.

Overall, the Bruins outrebounded Louisville, 40-22, the statistic Louisville Coach Denny Crum said decided the game.

“Some kids just have a real good nose for the ball,” Crum said of Bailey. “And it’s not him flying 18 feet in the air and getting them. He gets in there and scrambles and gets it.”

The Cardinals’ defense did force UCLA into 22 turnovers (seven by Bailey), and, with point guard Tyus Edney taking a rest for much of a late rally, brought Louisville to within four, 73-69, with 2:53 left in the game, after the Bruins had held as much as an 18-point second-half lead.

But UCLA, which won its 11th consecutive game and raised its record to 23-2, got consecutive steals from Charles O’Bannon, J.R. Henderson and Ed O’Bannon on the next three Louisville possessions. Down the stretch, with Edney making all eight of his free throws, UCLA outscored the Cardinals, 18-4.

“Every time we got close, they responded, and that’s what good teams do,” Crum said. “They’ve got three seniors who make the right plays when it counts.

“You don’t see Edney making mistakes, or Ed O’Bannon. To be within four points of that team with three minutes left, that’s a pretty good achievement for a team playing without any seniors.”

Matched against a Louisville defense that switched from zone to a harassing man-to-man, the Bruins had one of their most effective half-court offensive productions of the season, shooting 57.9% from the field despite getting few fast-break layups.

“A lot of people don’t give us credit for our half-court offense,” Charles O’Bannon said. “They think that we’re just a fast-breaking team, so if you cut off our break, UCLA dies. But that’s not necessarily the case.

“We showed that today.”

Louisville, which might need to win the Metro Conference tournament this week to get a tournament berth, fell to 16-13.

For UCLA, which closes the regular season by playing host to the Oregon schools this week, the hostile atmosphere, the Cardinals’ swarming half-court defense and hunger for an upset, and the pressure of protecting its No. 1 ranking, were comparable to what the Bruins will face once the tournament begins.

“In a sense it was (like a tournament game) because we were coming out and no one was cheering for us,” said Charles O’Bannon, who had 16 points, six assists and nine rebounds. “It was foreign land for us, and I think we handled it well.”

Said UCLA Coach Jim Harrick: “I think playing this game will help us as a basketball team. We had to face something different--they really make you scramble on offense with their defense, they don’t let you do some things you want to do.”

Ed O’Bannon led all scorers with 25 points on eight-of-12 shooting.

Bailey acknowledged that seven turnovers were too many, but said that, as hard as he plays, sometimes mistakes happen.

“(Former Cal standout) Jason Kidd, he’d get 10 or 12 assists a game, but he’d also get a lot of turnovers,” Bailey said. “That’s part of my game too. I think the coaches know it.

“I’m going full speed out there. I’m going to make some mistakes going full speed, but I’ll come back and make it up with a steal or a dunk or something. That’s the way I play.”