Bruins Weather a Late Storm

At high tide Saturday, the thundering and threatening Bruin wave swept through the Washington Huskies, reaching intimidating speeds and flattening everything in its wake.

Then the wind shifted, the tide rolled back, and UCLA--bereft of the bombarding spirit--was left hanging on for dear life, a pattern all too familiar to the Bruins.

Ahead by 30 at one point in the second half and suddenly made to fight it out down the stretch by the Huskies, UCLA ebbed and flowed and finally wrung out a 105-94 victory before 11,242 at Pauley Pavilion.

“I think we’re halfway there,” said senior forward J.R. Henderson, who scored 16 points, one of five Bruins who scored 16 or more, “since we can’t put two halves together.

“That’s our main problem. I guess we get a big lead and we start coasting. We can’t keep doing this.”

Coach Steve Lavin hurriedly, and not 100% convincingly, explained the second-half slippage by pointing to the three reserves who were in for a portion of it, and called the first 30 minutes UCLA’s best basketball of the season.

And, with the Bruins pressing and pouncing from the opening minute and strafing the slower Huskies from all over the floor, it probably was.

“I think we learned a lesson back in ’96 against Princeton,” senior Kris Johnson said, referring to the loss in the first round of the NCAA tournament. “We played at their tempo. Everybody was, ‘Why did you play at their tempo?’ We should’ve pressed them.

“Now, we’re trying to force our personality on our opponents. Because with the athletes we have, and the intelligence we have, if we can make other teams play at a high speed, they’re bound to make some bad decisions.”

Moving the ball around precisely (Toby Bailey and Earl Watson both had 11 assists) and jumping on every Washington miscue, UCLA flew out to a 52-34 halftime lead.

Then, the Bruins, also getting a big 16-point, 10-rebound performance from Jelani McCoy off the bench, turned the voltage up even higher to start the second half, seizing a 82-52 lead with 11:12 remaining.

“We went from playing one good half to playing a good 30 minutes,” said Johnson, who led UCLA with 26 points and added eight rebounds. “That’s a leap in the right direction.

“Obviously, the last 10 minutes were terrible. But day by day, we’re getting better. Tonight, we got 10 minutes better.”

The victory moved the eighth-ranked Bruins (17-3, 7-2 in Pacific 10 Conference play) into a tie for second with Stanford at the conference race’s halfway point, and dropped Washington (13-5, 6-3) to fourth.

“Every game you’re seeing some of the cylinders starting to hit,” Lavin said. “We’re not hitting all of our cylinders yet. We’re not a good team yet, but we’re getting better.

“I think in a month, we could be playing some very good basketball.”

With the big lead in this game, Lavin began to mix Brandon Loyd, Billy Knight and Travis Reed into the lineup, and Washington center Todd MacCulloch and wing players Donald Watts and Deon Luton, after sluggish first-half performances, began to heat up.

It was a safe 92-70 with 6:25 left, when Lavin put all three reserves in at once, alongside Baron Davis and Bailey. Two minutes and 16 seconds later, after a 12-0 Husky jolt, UCLA’s lead was 92-82.

Even after Lavin got Henderson, Watson and Johnson back in, Washington got it down to seven twice in the last two minutes, but six Bruin free throws finally cut the Huskies off.

“Any time we take the nucleus out, like against Illinois or against Oregon, that’s when teams blitz us off the floor,” Lavin said. “I love those guys. But we can’t have 30-point leads go to 10.”

The we-had-our-starters-out alibi isn’t the whole story. Lavin did have a couple of his mainstays on the floor at all times, because Washington’s MacCulloch was a big part of the comeback after first-half foul trouble, and because UCLA actually built the 30-point lead by using a seven-man rotation.

In the 23:09 that MacCulloch played, Washington outscored the Bruins, 67-62. In the 16:51 without him, UCLA dominated the Huskies, 43-27.

The 7-foot-1 MacCulloch finished 26 points and had 13 rebounds, but he played only five minutes in the first half after picking up his second foul.

Also, UCLA, with Lavin barely substituting, previously frittered away big second-half leads against Nevada Las Vegas, Oregon, Illinois (which actually took a late lead) and Louisville.

But all of those games resulted in victories, and the Bruins said Saturday that they know they are still in the hunt for the league title.

“We’re getting a lot more confidence in what kind of team we are, I think we’re finding our identity,” Bailey said. “In the beginning, we didn’t have real good chemistry. . . . But now we know if we play hard and keep passing the ball, we can play with anybody.”