Roads Not Well-Traveled

UCLA’s shrinking season, precisely captured in a 15-second flicker:

Bruin senior J.R. Henderson, who had just been whistled for his fourth foul in the middle of UCLA’s woeful 120-84 loss to Duke, wandered over to press row at courtside, and, in disgust and amusement, said six words that might as well be the theme of this wheezing campaign.

“Can you believe,” said Henderson, in his first mid-game interview, “this is happening?”

Henderson was speaking specifically about the frequent foul calls that limited him to 18 minutes, but might as well been summing up the 1997-98 UCLA experience, now, with the scent of lowered expectations in the air.

UCLA’s shrinking season, agonizingly captured in a 40-minute basketball game:

The soon-to-be top-ranked Blue Devils scored easily, on hard work in the paint and from wide-open shots from the outside, over screens and in the offensive glass.

Guard Trajan Langdon, popping free almost whenever he felt like it against UCLA’s curious perimeter defense, made six of his 10 three-point tries, was 11 for 16 overall, and led all scorers with a career-high tying 34.

And freshman forward Elton Brand, playing in his first game after a two-month lay-off because of a broken foot, gave the Blue Devils 16 energetic minutes, chipping in 14 points and seven rebounds.

The 120 points, by the way, was the most scored against the Bruins in the history of UCLA basketball.

Duke (26-2) hit 100 midway through the second half, and kept the engine purring all the way up to the finish line. Previously, the most a UCLA team had given up was in a 116-110 double-overtime loss to Stanford in December 1987.

It also was the fifth-largest margin of defeat in UCLA history, with Nos. 1 and 2 coming in the previous 57 games of Coach Steve Lavin’s tenure.

Before 9,314 at Cameron Indoor Arena, desperately needing a victory if not at least an uplifting effort, the Bruins did not just lose but, at times, seemed to lose faith.

There are only four games left in the regular season, exactly when the 12th-ranked Bruins (20-6) were supposed to be accelerating into the NCAA tournament.

But UCLA, which lost center Jelani McCoy last week, has fallen three times in six February games, and is 1-5 against ranked teams overall (and lost by a combined 77 points to North Carolina and Duke).

“We’re not a team of quitters,” said UCLA senior forward Kris Johnson, who had 20 points. “We’re not going to give up just because we lost by 36 to Duke. Anybody on this team should be shot if they think like that.

“We’ve just got to keep fighting back.”

Henderson, pointedly, was fighting with the referees throughout, especially after he was called for his second foul with 15:54 left in the first half, and the Blue Devils leading, 9-5.

He came out for a little over a minute, then 25 seconds later drew his third, on a charge into Shane Battier. When Henderson was removed from the game, he kicked a water bottle under the bench and stormed at the referees.

With Henderson, UCLA’s only experienced big man, out of the lineup--he picked up his fourth minutes into the second half on a strange call under the UCLA basket--the Bruin offense was a series of Baron Davis one-on-one flashes.

Davis had 18 points in the game, including a career-high four three-pointers, but it wasn’t enough against Duke’s 10-man rotation of talented players.

UCLA made only 11 of its 42 field-goal tries in the first half, on its way to a 57-33 halftime deficit.

“You know, we’ll never make excuses,” Lavin said. “But, J.R. Henderson is kind of a central figure for this team. When J.R. Henderson isn’t on the floor, that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on us.”

Henderson said he could only treat the game, and the fouls, as something to laugh about, or else he’d go crazy.

“You try to prepare yourself for something like that,” Henderson said. “But there is no preparing yourself for what happened tonight. . . . It’s unbelievable to me how they just couldn’t let a player play instead of calling every ticky-tack thing. I knew we were in the ACC, and we’re from the Pac-10, so we might get a couple of calls against us.

“[But] to make it that obvious is just not right. It’s not a fair game when the refs take over like that. They definitely determined the outcome tonight. It already was going to be tough for us. . . . You end up laughing at it--you get so mad, you have to laugh.”

But even Henderson conceded that his absence hurt UCLA mostly on offense, and did not pardon the Bruin defense’s continued inability to defend perimeter shooters. Duke made 15 of its 28 three-point tries.

“Them hitting 15 three-pointers was a very big part of the game,” Henderson said. “It’s not like I was out and they were just pounding and pounding us.”

Said Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski, when asked how much Henderson’s absences helped his team: “We shot all ‘threes’, so we hardly went inside when he went out.”

And where does that leave UCLA, which had a shot at a No. 2-seeding earlier in the season but now might be looking hard at a tough No. 4 or 5?

“It’s wasted energy if you sulk and trip on it,” Johnson said. “Now we’ve just got to finish up our conference schedule and hopefully get a decent seed in the tournament.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Fall Guys How UCLA has fared against ranked teams this season:

Nov. 27: lost to No. 4 North Carolina, 109-68

Dec. 6: defeated No. 8 New Mexico, 69-58

Jan. 3: lost to No. 8 Arizona, 87-75

Jan. 17: lost to No. 7 Stanford, 93-80

Feb. 12: lost to No. 14 Stanford, 84-81

Feb. 22: lost to No. 2 Duke, 120-84

Combined record of teams UCLA has defeated this year: 267-239 (.528)

Combined record of teams UCLA has lost to this year: 132-25 (.841)

Low points

Worst losses in UCLA history:

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Marg. Score Season 48 Stanford 109, UCLA 61 1996-97 41 North Carolina 109, UCLA 68 1997-98 38 Arizona 102, UCLA 64 1988-89 37 North Carolina 107, UCLA 70 1985-86 36 Duke 120, UCLA 84 1997-98 36 Stanford 69, UCLA 33 1937-38 34 USC 60, UCLA 26 1939-40 33 USC 69, UCLA 36 1938-39 33 Stanford 69, UCLA 36 1936-37 33 USC 55, UCLA 22 1934-35

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