UCLA Discovers Precisely Why Kansas Is No. 1

UCLA tried to sprint through the Jayhawk roadblock Saturday, but got caught and crushed once again.

How wide is the divide between No. 1 Kansas and soon-to-be-unranked and still-unsteady UCLA?

All it took was a half for UCLA to show it isn’t half the team that Kansas is. Actually, only six minutes.

In a raging rush during the first half of Kansas’ roaring 96-83 victory, the Jayhawks jammed the Bruin offense into chaos, and ran wild on their own--scoring on 15 consecutive possessions.

When the 32-8 run was over, the Jayhawks had a 54-26 lead with a minute to play in the half, the disorganized and disoriented Bruins were out of the game, and boos rained down from the 12,060 at Pauley Pavilion.

“I thought they were a talented team, but I didn’t know they were so precise,” Bruin guard Toby Bailey said of the Jayhawks (7-0), who have won six consecutive road games. “That team is in playoff form, and we’re nowhere near it.”

Instead, the Bruins (1-2) looked very much like last season’s team, tripped up by all the same weaknesses that wounded them last season, including their come-from-ahead, 85-70 loss at Kansas last December.

Combining Kansas’ dominant second half of the 1995 game with the first half of this game, the Jayhawks outscored UCLA, 113-52, in consecutive halves.

“We over-dribbled, had very little ball reversal, jacked up some low-percentage shots,” interim Coach Steve Lavin said. “We looked like we played with a lot of anxiety and frustration out there, and not with a lot of poise.

“The only positive thing is we got a report card on our deficiencies, and it’s the same thing it was last year--decision-making and turnovers.”

Lavin even said he might force his team into a “Gene Hackman-’Hoosiers’ thing,” demanding that they pass the ball at least five times each trip before shooting it.

In the first half, UCLA committed 18 turnovers--a stunning number even for this turnover-plagued team--put up only 21 shots (to Kansas’ 40) and gave up 18 points to Jayhawk forward Raef LaFrentz, who roamed the baseline with impunity throughout the game, scoring a career-high 31 points.

For UCLA, which committed 26 turnovers overall, J.R. Henderson got in early foul trouble, Bailey couldn’t find any rhythm, and only Charles O’Bannon, who scored a team-high 20 points, seemed to be able to match the Jayhawks’ energy.

Kansas Coach Roy Williams, whose team emerged spectacularly from this now-concluded opening road stretch, suggested that the recent turmoil caused by the sudden firing of Jim Harrick contributed to the Bruins’ confusion.

“I feel for not only Steve, but for the players here,” Williams said. “They’ve been through a very, very tumultuous time, and they’ve had a lot of attention focused on them, a lot of scrutiny.

“I do think there will be a point in time when they band together and try to turn away from all the distractions and focus on playing better basketball.

“And when it comes, they’re going to be a load for people to handle.”

Though both teams are stocked with experienced starters, and though Kansas was without senior point guard Jacque Vaughn and had every reason to be road-weary and looking for excuses, the Jayhawks looked organized and powerful.

Ryan Robertson continued his strong play in place of Vaughn, getting 11 assists and committing only two turnovers; shooting guard Jerod Haase ran through the Bruin defense consistently, scoring 11 of his 22 points during the critical first-half run.

“They put on a basketball clinic today, just on simple things: ball reversal, passing, cutting, screening, working as a team,” Lavin said. “They’re like a buzz saw going at people, cutting right through whoever they face.”

And antsy, aimless UCLA played like a chicken with its head cut off.

In that devastating first half, the Bruins seemed to throw the ball away on every other pass--Jelani McCoy had five turnovers in the first 20 minutes, O’Bannon, Cameron Dollar, Bailey and Kris Johnson had three apiece.

According to Dollar, it was a matter of players forcing things, instead of realizing that the simplest passes are usually the best.

“At some time we’ll have to learn that we have to pass up some good shots to get the great shots,” Dollar said. “We have to learn to swing it to the other side to get the kinds of shots Kansas was getting.”

Then, Dollar suggested that Lavin is trying to instill a sense of order to a team that, perhaps, was lacking it in previous years.

“We’ve never really learned how to play that way, we’ve never really practiced that,” Dollar said, adding that even the national title team played unselfishly because Ed O’Bannon and Tyus Edney forced them to, not because they were coached that way.

“We’ve always mostly got our offense out of transition, just running up the floor. When you haven’t learned to play like that on offense, it’s hard when the defense takes that away.

“Even the year we won it, that was mostly because of the seniors--they pretty much just decided on their own that we were going to do that on offense.”

Said O’Bannon: “They’re not better than I thought, but they’re better than us. They were better today, anyway.”