Toby or Not Toby? That Is the UCLA Question

Toby Bailey was nothing, and then he was 32 points of light. And then he was just empty.

The season was over. Then it was overflowing with possibility and over-heated with emotion.

And then it was too late.

In a crashing, cathartic game, UCLA rose and fell, retrenched and charged again, but lost to Washington, 95-94, before 6,527 at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.

Great, but too late.

On Sunday, the Bruins regained something they had lost, erasing a 16-point first-half deficit with an explosive, 64-point second half, seizing its first and only lead with 12.8 seconds left in the game on Kris Johnson’s three-point basket.

But they then lost what they had regained, stumbling off the court in a daze after Husky center Todd MacCulloch made two free throws with 2.1 seconds left and UCLA could not get off a shot before the buzzer.

Bailey galvanized 18th-ranked UCLA, scoring all 32 of his points in the second half (tying Lew Alcindor’s 31-year-old school record for points in a half), and he voiced the team’s stark disappointment.

Did it all come too late, for Sunday and for the Bruins’ season?

“It shows we have the heart to fight back,” said Bailey, who made 13 of his 17 shots in the second half, including three of four from three-point distance. “I’m proud of our team for that.

“But it still hurts. It doesn’t seem like we’re supposed to lose these kinds of games, when we’re fighting back so hard.”

And when there are only two games left in the regular season, when the NCAA tournament selection committee is looking real hard for signs of a revival.

Said senior forward J.R. Henderson, who scored 20 points but was whistled for the holding foul on MacCulloch that set up Washington’s victory: “It’s just the way the game ended. Everybody was really pumped, everybody was really into it when we were on our surge, and for it to end in a weird way, it kind of threw us for a loop.”

It was UCLA’s fourth loss in its last eight games, and the Bruins’ sleepwalk through the first half fit their recent pattern of sluggish, disorganized play.

But, in a departure from the Bruins’ recent turgid efforts--even in victory--on Sunday, UCLA (21-7, 11-5 in the Pacific 10 Conference) played a full half of near-perfect basketball against a Husky team that had to win to stay in the NCAA hunt.

There was harassing defense, flying offense and Bailey driving at will, flicking in high-speed lay-ups, stepping into passing lanes for key steals and tossing in shots from all angles.

“Toby scored 32 in the second half? Thirty-two? That’s crazy!” said Johnson, who scored 18 points.

“That’s how we’re all going to have to step up if we’re going to have any chance of doing anything. Toby and myself, we have to remember how this feels, how we had to fight.

“If we can play with that kind of fire and intensity, there’s no telling what we can do.”

Said Bailey, who missed all three of his shots in the first half but still managed a career-high point total: “I just wanted to win the game really bad. I felt like I let the team down in the first half by committing three stupid fouls, and I let the ball bounce off of my hands a couple of times.

“I just knew I had to come back and redeem myself in the second half.”

With Bailey fairly unstoppable, the Bruins scored on 15 of their last 18 possessions--including 10 in a row at one point (running up 18 points in less than five minutes)--before the deciding MacCulloch free throws.

Problem was, with UCLA in serious foul trouble, Washington (17-9, 10-7) also scored on 15 of its last 18, resulting in UCLA’s run in the final 6:22 being 31-24.

The Huskies held an 88-81 lead with 1:31 left, but Bailey’s last three-point basket and another jump shot and Henderson’s basket and three free throws brought UCLA within 92-91 with 30 seconds left.

Washington made 60% of its shots, but only five of its last 10 free throws (with guard Donald Watts missing three) in the final 1:30. That set things up for Johnson’s go-ahead three-pointer.

“I was happy just in terms of us improving as a basketball team,” Bruin Coach Steve Lavin said. “The way we played in the second half is the way we can play and the way we have to play if we’re going to have success in the NCAA tournament.

“We played with great energy, great togetherness.”

In the deciding possession, after a held-ball situation gave Washington back the ball, Henderson tried to prevent the 7-foot MacCulloch (who scored 25 points) from cutting for an open lob pass.

“There wasn’t much contact, but that’s up to the ref,” Henderson said. “If he wants to call it, he can call it. We can get into a big discussion about the whole game, but we don’t want to blame it on the ref. We played hard, we just came up short.”

Said Johnson: “It felt like we were going to win this game, and all of a sudden a catastrophe happens.

“When you make that kind of comeback, from 20 or whatever it was, you keep scratching and clawing, you never give up, you usually get the win. I think we might be cursed or something. . . . We were diving on the floor, we just left everything out there. And Washington withstood it.”