Bruins Feel Empowered

Steve Lavin emerged from the UCLA locker room early Saturday evening with a half-eaten pizza slice in his left hand and a diet soda in his right.

“I haven’t eaten since the Washington game,” the coach said.

He was kidding.

Probably.

The Bruins were a merry band again. They regained their sense of humor, their appetite and their winning ways, responding to the emotional defeat two nights earlier in Seattle by crushing Washington State, 86-64, before 3,189 at Friel Court as Jason Kapono had a game-high 20 points.

Any kind of win would have been critical, but this way made it even more satisfying. No. 24 UCLA, after five consecutive close finishes, two of which were losses, finally dispatched an undermanned opponent with some authority, the first time that has happened since Dec. 21 against Maine in Hawaii.

Maybe it would have liked going down to the wire again, to stare down the demons from Thursday at Washington.

Yeah, right.

Anything less than this would have continued the doubts about the Bruins’ long-term outlook, not just whether they were in a temporary slump. They needed a blowout because USC, the next opponent, had beaten Washington State by 22 points. They needed it because Washington State came in 5-5 and looking like the leading contender in the statewide race to claim last place in the Pacific 10 Conference.

They needed it just because.

“Versus Washington, we were playing, but not with fire,” Kapono said. “Here, we were playing with a purpose. We were playing to beat them bad.”

Mission accomplished. The 22-point margin marked the Cougars’ worst home loss since a 26-point setback to Arizona on Feb. 1, 1990. Thursday’s game against the Trojans was played about 75 miles north, in Spokane, and was officially considered a neutral-site game. It was also the worst Friel Court defeat in the series since the 88-50 final against No. 1 UCLA on Feb. 10, 1973.

Washington State, despite a career-high 19 points from sophomore Mike Bush, who spent the first two years of his high school career at Riverside Rubidoux, didn’t even last until halftime. It trailed by 14 points with the game 15 minutes old. The deficit was 15 at halftime. The Cougars made a brief surge immediately after intermission, then got left behind for good.

The margin was between 18 and 26 most of the final 14 minutes. Lavin cleared his bench, which isn’t saying much since that has been known to happen in the first half of close games, but Rico Hines got 23 minutes and responded with a career-high 12 points, along with five assists, and Billy Knight added 14 points in 16 minutes.

The Bruins shot 58.9%, second this season only to the 67.9% against Morgan State on Dec. 1. They had more assists than turnovers, for only the second time in the last five games. They got inside play from Dan Gadzuric (16 points on seven-of-nine shooting, five offensive rebounds, seven boards overall in 21 minutes) and perimeter contributions from Knight (four for seven on three-pointers) and Kapono (two for three from behind the arc).

“We needed it big-time,” said Hines, continuing to play a major role off the bench. “All the guys, we hated that [Washington] loss. It was a bad loss. But I think we showed a lot of maturity coming out like that.”

As though they had something to prove.

“We were more focused,” said Kapono, who made eight of 12 shots and also had six assists without a turnover. “After the loss, we were all pretty much, ‘We weren’t playing good basketball, we weren’t playing as a team, we weren’t playing hard.’ Those three things are keys to winning.

“[Saturday], we all were trying to spot guys up, move the ball. We were trying to play team basketball. . . . We aren’t feeling pretty good about ourselves. But we are feeling better than Thursday night.”

Said Hines: “We were sick to our stomachs. It was important for us to come out and play like this.”

Knight had additional reasons. This was his second game back after announcing his intention to transfer because of a lack of playing time, and the first resulted in only six minutes and no shots at Washington. Against Washington State, though, he got 16 minutes, the first time in double digits since Dec. 21 versus Maine and the most since 10 days before that.

He didn’t waste the opportunity. He was two for four on three-pointers, and three for five overall, in the first half, when there still was some doubt about the outcome. Two more baskets from behind the arc in the second half made it his most productive game of the season for his area of specialization.

“It’s good to get a game like that,” Knight said. “I can build with that.”

All the Bruins know the feeling.