Despite Loss, Lavin’s Plan Makes Sense

UCLA basketball has suffered plenty of can’t-look losses in the hour-glass Steve Lavin era.

Georgia Tech, last month, Arrowhead Pond?

There wasn’t enough disinfectant to cleanse the joint.

You say Cal State Northridge at home and we say where was that rolling blackout when we needed it?

Who can forget 43 points against Gonzaga at Pauley Pavilion last season or, whopper of whoppers--Stanford 109, UCLA 61 in 1996-97?

We’re hear to state, remarkably, that UCLA’s 25-point loss to Arizona on Saturday at the McKale Center does not belong in this pathetic pantheon.

Not even close.

Compared to where the program was a year ago when wheels lifted in Phoenix, Saturday’s 88-63 blowout could be described as a relative desert bloom.

Last year, two losses by a combined 44 points at the Arizona schools dropped the Bruins to 4-8 in Pacific 10 Conference play and put Lavin as precariously close to losing his job as at any point in his post-Harrick tenure.

“We were in a dismal state,” senior guard Ryan Bailey said Saturday. “Last year, we had no identity coming out of here. We were playing street ball.”

This year’s Bruins leave Arizona with a split. They are 10-5 overall, 4-1 in the Pac-10.

UCLA led No. 17 Arizona by eight points at the half before the Bruins were outscored, 55-22, in a ballroom blitz.

UCLA lost suddenly, to a suddenly superior team, on the road, playing all but the first 1:23 after halftime without its best player, Earl Watson.

Watson did not return after picking up his fourth foul, too stiff from the back and hip injuries he suffered in Thursday night’s victory over Arizona State.

UCLA without Watson is like power steering without power.

The Bruins played with forward Matt Barnes limping on a sprained foot. Barnes was on crutches Friday and probably should have stayed on them.

Excuses?

You bet. And good ones too.

UCLA leaves Arizona this year with two morsels to build on:

Hope and . . .

“We do have an identity,” Bailey said. “We are a pressing team and we like to get out.”

From the second half of the Dec. 23 North Carolina loss through the first half of Saturday’s defeat, UCLA has used the press to stave off opponents and the circling scavengers above Lavin.

The press has given fans hope that UCLA’s season will not perish into the amorphous hole that past seasons have too often become.

The key, of course, is to stay the course, despite the lopsidedness of Saturday’s loss.

An opposing school losing at Arizona is not a news bulletin. Arizona has won 193 of its last 204 home games.

“We’ve come in here with some great teams and got crushed,” Lavin said. “This is a tough place to play.”

After a season of setbacks and heartbreak, Arizona played Saturday’s second half like the team most of us thought might rank with some of the all-time greats by season’s end.

This was always going to be a watershed test for UCLA’s press, because Arizona can run the press even better than UCLA.

Without Watson in charge, Arizona shredded the UCLA defense, making 57.7% of its second-half shots and fleecing UCLA ballhandlers for seven steals.

“It was no fire and brimstone,” Arizona Coach Lute Olson said of his halftime speech. “We just didn’t have that snap, and the best way to solve that problem is to get after people.”

But UCLA should not waver.

Here’s what the Bruins know on Jan. 21: they don’t have the firepower to beat Arizona with the press. They may not have enough to defeat No. 1 Stanford.

What UCLA has is a scheme and an attitude to beat everybody else.

A third-place finish in the Pac-10, an unfathomable thought after the team fell to 4-4, is now a reasonable expectation.

UCLA proved in its six-game winning streak and first-half performance Saturday that there finally may be a plan in place under Lavin.

“We’ve demonstrated that if we have a rotation of nine, if we have nine players, our press can be effective,” Lavin said.

Compared to a year ago, the Bruins can almost skip home with their split.

UCLA hosts the Oregon schools next weekend, then embarks on a critical Bay Area swing: at California on Feb. 1 and at Stanford on Feb. 3. Then it’s at USC, at DePaul, and the Arizonas at home.

No one is saying the crisis is over.

Doubts still linger.

Near the end of Saturday’s game, Arizona fans started the chant of “Rick Pitino! Rick Pitino!” toward Lavin on the UCLA bench.

It so offended Vicki Olson, oldest daughter of the Arizona coach, that she personally apologized to Lavin as he left the postgame interview room.

“That was really cruel,” Vicki said. “I’m sorry.”

Lavin just shrugged it off.

In a strange way, despite the loss, he probably has never felt more comfortable about the direction his team is headed.

The most valid criticism of Lavin’s teams is they have been unstructured and often unwatchable.

It has been dwindling attendance at Pauley Pavilion that has caught the attention of Athletic Director Peter Dalis, the loss of revenue as much as the losses that have driven him to place unspecific phone calls to the likes of Pitino.

Even Dalis has at long last realized that two wins in the NCAA tournament do not override months of meandering and nonsensical bursts of basketball.

What fans want, more than anything, is a level of consistency.

Bruin game plans are no longer three-point crap shoots.

UCLA will press. UCLA will run.

It may not work against Arizona, but it could be enough to save the coach’s hide.

The important thing is that UCLA is watchable again.

We’ll see how long it lasts.