Bruins Discover a Groove in Stretch

UCLA walked onto McArthur Court as uncertain contenders Saturday, but left firing off a barrage of taunts and swaggering like a defending national champion.

Well, like a very youthful, impetuous and quite satisfied defending champion, at least.

This is not your brother’s Bruin basketball team.

It took their finest eight-minute stretch of basketball to rescue the Bruins from a late-game 13-point deficit, but by the final buzzer Cameron Dollar was leaping into his teammates’ arms and Kris Johnson and Charles O’Bannon were screaming at the top of their lungs near the Oregon Duck faithful.

“Rush the court!” they taunted at the end of UCLA’s cathartic 77-71 victory. “Rush the court NOW!”

But there were no Duck fans to repeat the on-court celebrations of the past two Duck upsets of UCLA at McArthur, only return jibes as the Bruins danced back into their locker room.

The victory clinches at least a tie for the Pacific 10 title--UCLA can win it outright by beating either Washington or Washington State in its last two games.

After weeks of chaotic play and frequent failures--all the way up to last Sunday’s loss at Duke and Thursday night’s near-disaster at Oregon State--it’s March again in the Bruin nation, and this tempestuous UCLA squad, 21-7 overall and 14-2 in the Pac-10, thinks it knows what that means.

“Coach [Jim] Harrick said February’s over, and March is my month,” said guard Toby Bailey, who ended his recent seven-game shooting woes by scoring eight of his team’s final 18 points, including a leaning 10-foot jump shot that put the Bruins ahead to say, 73-71, with 38 seconds to play. “And I believe that.”

Compared to last year’s squad, a cockier, more erratic, thunderously more suspenseful UCLA team found itself in deep trouble again Saturday--then found the way to rescue themselves once again.

Trailing, 66-53, with eight minutes to play, the Bruins--who had only 12 turnovers--rushed past a tiring Duck team, outscoring it, 24-5, down the stretch.

“Just the fact that I could do something productive, hit a shot at the end of the game, clinch winning the Pac-10, them beating us here the last two years, all of that makes this the best victory of the year,” Bailey said.

The pivotal play was planned to go to either J.R. Henderson or Johnson, but Bailey had the distinct height advantage against the the 5-foot-10 Wilkins.

“I wasn’t thinking to take it, but they weren’t open, and I decided to do what came natural,” said Bailey, who scored 16 points, one behind O’Bannon’s team-high 17.

After having to repeatedly tell his team to stop jabbering at one other and act poised, Harrick credited his team’s inspired late defense, which shut down Duck center Kyle Milling (only two of his 12 points in the second half) and point guard Kenya Wilkins (five turnovers in the second half).

“In the last eight minutes, we brought the defense up, except against Wilkins,” Harrick said. “We just played and played and played and kept playing. We just forgot everything that was on our minds about world hunger and strife and war . . . and when we play, we show sparks of being a good team.”

The big defensive push reached its zenith with about 22 seconds left, and UCLA up by two, when Duck swingman Jamal Lawrence had no choice but to barrel down the sideline and fling a shot that did not touch the rim.

Before the rally, the Bruins were playing in the same disjointed, confused fashion that almost lost them the Oregon State game, and at one point, good friends Bailey and Johnson engaged in a heated, face-to-face argument.

Finding open lanes for three-point shots (the Ducks made seven of them in the game) and watching as UCLA squandered possession after possession, Oregon (15-13, 8-9) had a 14-point lead at two different times in the second half.

The first UCLA spark came from O’Bannon, who made two three-point shots from the left side of the floor, then made a twisting layup and the following foul shot, to get UCLA within hailing distance.

“I wanted to step up and become the leader I was supposed to be at the beginning of the season,” O’Bannon said. “It’s March now. Our theme all year has been boys-to-men. We showed tonight that we’re definitely men.”

Said Johnson: “We just couldn’t keep settling for mediocrity, just accept losses and say it’s OK. We had to win this game. And we did.”

* TROJANS LOSE: A turnover in the final seconds at Oregon State paves the way for USC’s eighth loss in a row. C6