Flowers Won’t Complain About Demotion

Easy come, easy go. Jason Flowers is learning that lesson the hard way. After starting 10 consecutive games at shooting guard for the Bruins, he was benched Saturday in favor of Billy Knight and didn’t play a minute against Stanford. Flowers took the demotion in stride, even though he had been playing well in recent weeks. UCLA Coach Steve Lavin opted to go with Knight--who scored a game-high 22 points--because he had played well on the Bay Area trip last season.

“I look at it as we just beat the No. 1 team in the nation,” Flowers said. “I said the whole time that I came back here [from UC Irvine] to win, and we’re winning. So how can I complain, whether I’m playing or not?”

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Forward Matt Barnes said he’s tired of people being critical of Lavin, who called the past three weeks the most difficult of his coaching career.

“Lavin’s got this job locked up,” Barnes said. “We’ve had a great season so far. He’s the second fastest to 100 wins [in UCLA history]. I just think it’s getting out of hand, every place we go. [The Rick Pitino comments] are just getting old. Teams can keep doing it, but it doesn’t faze us and it doesn’t faze him. He’s not worried about it.”

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UCLA is ninth in this week’s Rating Percentage Index, four spots ahead of Arizona. Stanford remains No. 1, and USC is 19th.