Bruins Shut Off Bears’ Electricity in the Final 4:02

In a 4 1/2-month season, it was only four minutes and two seconds. But it looked and sounded like more.

Four minutes, two seconds of hard UCLA basketball. A loud, long, and--for California--painfully scoreless four minutes, two seconds.

It was 4:02 of scraping and slapping and diving and blocking that lifted the Bruins past California, 73-65, on Thursday and might have been the turnaround moment for a UCLA team searching for consistency.

By the end of it, Jelani McCoy was slamming home a Cameron Dollar pass, strolling to center court and receiving a massive chest bump from the normally docile J.R. Henderson.

By the end of it, the Bruins’ recent malaise--two losses, two lackadaisical victories against the Oregon schools--was part of the past.

“We just decided to play hard basketball for once,” said Henderson, who led UCLA with 21 points and nine rebounds and matched up against Cal freshman phenom Shareef Abdur-Rahim for most of the night.

“We finally started guarding guys like the way we were doing five games ago, and it came in the deciding moments.”

In another raging, blazing UCLA-California basketball game, the 17th-ranked Bruins (16-5, 9-1 in Pacific 10 Conference) shut out a hard-charging Bear squad for the final 242 ticks, scoring the last nine points of the game in front of 15,039 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

It was the Bears’ first home conference loss this season.

After Cal forward Tremaine Fowlkes made a three-point shot to put the Bears ahead, 65-64, the Bears put up eight shots--two were blocked by a flying Charles O’Bannon, six others failed to go through the net, and one Cal possession was terminated when Dollar hit the floor to get a held ball with Abdur-Rahim.

Meanwhile, the Bruins were getting unplanned bonuses--such as a free throw by Dollar that touched the top of the backboard before settling into the net, and, most back-breakingly, McCoy’s floating, 14-foot jump shot that gave UCLA a 68-65 lead with 2:13 left.

“When I first caught it,” said McCoy, who rebounded from a handful of mediocre recent efforts by grabbing seven rebounds, “I turned and [Michael Stewart] saw me, and kind of backed up, probably he was thinking, ‘It’s only McCoy.’ So I just shot it.”

Said Henderson: “I was praying when he shot that. It was a huge, huge shot. But he makes those in practice.”

The drama of the final minutes was set up when Cal (12-6, 6-4) roared back from a 60-52 deficit with 8:24 left, mostly on the hustle of Fowlkes (14 points, nine rebounds) and the rebounding of Abdur-Rahim, who ended up with 24 points and 16 rebounds.

The Bears outscored UCLA, 13-4, as Bruin Coach Jim Harrick got closer and closer to drawing a technical foul from referee Mark Reischling, who had been feeling Harrick’s wrath all game.

At 66-65, Dollar was ruled to have stepped out of bounds, but appeared to have been forced out by Fowlkes, causing Harrick to slam the scorer’s table in frustration.

But during the following timeout, Harrick was chuckling. “I just told him, it’s all right, it’s OK, we’re winning,” said assistant coach Lorenzo Romar.

When it was over, Harrick looked drained and his voice was all but gone.

The rest of the UCLA team celebrated quietly.

“This victory didn’t start tonight,” Romar said. “This victory started Monday or Tuesday in practice, or maybe even in the locker room after the Oregon State game.

“We saw a businesslike attitude from this team.”

Bruin Notes

UCLA held Cal to 32.3% shooting (20 of 62) and only 27.3% (nine of 33) in second half. . . . After twisting his right knee in practice earlier this week, sophomore center omm’A Givens did not play Thursday. Givens is listed as day-to-day and his status is uncertain for Saturday’s game against Stanford.

* PAC-10 RACE

Oregon wins at Washington, 55-52, and the cold-shooting Huskies’ second home loss of the season dealt their aspirations for an NCAA tournament berth a tough blow. C6