To O’Bannon, Winning Shot Was a Piece of Cake

UCLA’s Charles O’Bannon will always remember his 21st birthday as the day he ruined USC’s game of the season.

O’Bannon’s double-pump 12-foot jump shot with four-tenths of a second remaining saved the No. 16 Bruins from being the team that soothed a sinking USC season with a dramatic 61-59 victory over the Trojans Thursday night before a crowd of 9,433 at the Sports Arena.

USC played its best overall game of the season but still came up short when O’Bannon took a pass from Toby Bailey, faked USC’s Damion Dawson and then shot over a charging Ty Reuter to end the Trojans’ upset hope.

“I haven’t had a birthday this good in a while,” said O’Bannon, who had an unspectacular game up to his final shot as he finished with only 10 points and six rebounds.

“Toby brought the ball up and he basically created the shot. He drew my man to him and he kicked it to me. When I went up, I didn’t feel I had the shot. [Reuter] got a hand up and I just tried to get higher than him.”

For the Trojans--who dropped to 11-15 overall and 4-10 in the Pacific 10 Conference--the loss was difficult to take after outplaying UCLA for most of the game. Since the firing of Charlie Parker on Feb. 7, USC had lost four consecutive games under interim Coach Henry Bibby, who played on three NCAA title-winning teams at UCLA.

USC, however, gave the Bruins all they could handle. With Avondre Jones back in the starting lineup after sitting out four games because of off-court problems, the Trojans played as if determined to shake their recent turmoil.

USC made the up-tempo Bruins slow down with tough defensive play and patience on offense. The Trojans made only 36.2% of their shots, but they outrebounded UCLA, 33-26.

“I thought Southern Cal played great . . . the best game anyone has played against us in a long time,” said UCLA Coach Jim Harrick, whose Bruins improved to 19-6 and 12-2.

“I thought they did a terrific job, they played a near-perfect game. They had two guys go 40 minutes, and one went 39. They got excellent play out of some of their guys.”

UCLA started the game as it had in the first meeting between the teams when the Bruins set a school record by making 73.1% of their shots from the field in defeating USC, 99-72, last month at Pauley Pavilion. With J.R. Henderson and Jelani McCoy dominating the inside, UCLA led for most of the first half until USC rallied behind the hustle of Stais Boseman, who finished with a game-high 22 points.

With only seven scholarship players in uniform, USC dug deep and outscored UCLA, 11-2, to take a 35-27 lead at the break.

In the second half, UCLA got back into the game with Kris Johnson--who had a team-high 17 points--working the baseline for several outside shots and drives to help the Bruins take a 45-44 lead with 11:32 left in the game.

“That was the only play that was working,” UCLA’s J.R. Henderson said about Johnson’s scoring. “We were just kind of milking it. Run it to Kris, run it to Kris.”

Bibby then took a chance with 11:10 remaining when he put Jones back in the game with four fouls and USC tied the game, 52-52, on a fastbreak dunk by Boseman with 5:40 left and then took a 55-52 lead on a three-point shot by Reuter with 3:39 left.

Johnson helped UCLA take a 59-57 lead with two jump shots before Jones made two clutch free throws with 10 seconds remaining, setting up the Bruins’ final possession and O’Bannon’s winning shot.

“We played the game we wanted to play,” said Bibby, who is 0-5 with the Trojans. “We knew we weren’t going to score a lot of points and we didn’t want them to score a lot of points. If we played run and gun, we’d have no chance. We wanted to slow it down.”

It was a game plan that nearly worked, but not quite.

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Pacific 10 Basketball

STANDINGS

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Conf Overall Team W L W L UCLA 21 2 19 6 Arizona 9 4 20 5 Stanford 9 5 16 7 California 9 5 15 8 Washington 7 6 14 8 Washington St. 6 7 14 8 Oregon 6 8 13 12 Arizona St. 5 8 10 12 USC 4 10 11 15 Oregon St. 1 13 3 20

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INSIDE

CAL WINS: California beat Washington, 67-56, to move into a third-place tie with Stanford, which lost to surging Washington State, 68-59. C5