Now Barnes Can Hit Broad Side of Basket

Matt Barnes didn’t have to see the scouting report on himself last season.

Duke practically read it out loud in the Sweet 16.

“Shane Battier was playing 10 feet off him,” Billy Knight said.

The Blue Devils were daring Barnes to shoot.

“Yeah, he laid off me,” Barnes said. “Me and my dad talked about that a lot.”

No one is going to bet against Barnes any more.

Barnes scored 27 points Saturday in UCLA’s upset of No. 1 Kansas, two days after he scored a career-high 34 in the loss to USC.

“Teams better start using new scouting reports,” Knight said. “He looks like a pro out there.”

Barnes scored on three-pointers. (He has 10 in the last two games, two more than he had in the last two seasons.) He scored on slippery cuts through the lane. And he scored two of his loudest points on a ferocious windmill dunk, sprinting to the other end after a steal.

Barnes’ career has been more role player than record-setter, but his 61 points in the last two games are the most by any UCLA player since Ed O’Bannon scored 64 in a two-game stretch during the Bruins’ last national championship season in 1995.

After Saturday, Barnes is shooting 54%--and 50% from three-point range, making 19 for 38.

“Matt’s playing in the magic zone right now,” Coach Steve Lavin said.

“Sometimes it lasts the whole year. It did for Ed O’Bannon in ’95. Sometimes it lasts for a few games or weeks.”

UCLA can only hope it lasts as long as possible.

On an afternoon when Jason Kapono scored only 10 points, Dan Gadzuric fouled out and freshman point guard Cedric Bozeman teetered between brilliant and boneheaded, UCLA beat the No. 1-ranked team in the country.

The Bruins did it with defense, helping force 16 first-half turnovers.

They did it with rebounding--outrebounding a team that has the nation’s leading rebounder in Drew Gooden, and doing it only two days after being destroyed on the boards by USC.

And they did it with shooting, finishing with 52.6% against a team that hadn’t allowed anyone to shoot 50% all season.

“It shows our potential, what we can be,” Barnes said. “And last Thursday shows what we can be too. It’s kind of frustrating to know you can beat the No. 1 team and not be able to beat teams in our own conference we should beat.”

Despite its habit of knocking off No. 1 teams and losing to supposedly lesser foes, UCLA isn’t looking exactly like the team everyone expected.

Kapono is caught in a scoring funk caused by playing too much point guard while Bozeman was injured.

Gadzuric, you never quite know--though he had his moments against Kansas, in a 13-point, three-block performance.

But the Bruins are making do on a tag-team of performances from such players as Barnes, Knight and T.J. Cummings.

“It’s going to be different people every night because we have tremendous balance,” Lavin said. “T.J. comes off the bench and gets 20-plus, then Dan gets 20-plus, then Billy gets 30, then Matt gets 30. That’s the strength of this team.”

Barnes established his big-game scoring ability with 32 points against Stanford last season. But this seems like something more.

After last season--with his senior season and the knowledge he’ll have to be a perimeter player in the NBA smack in his face--Barnes went to work.

Instead of sticking around the all-star pickup games at Pauley Pavilion, he went home to Northern California and played with Sacramento King players.

“Chris Webber, Bobby Jackson, Peja Stojakovic,” Barnes said.

“I worked really hard on being able to drive and shoot.”

Still, frustrated with an early-season stretch of single-digit scoring games, he needed more help, and got it from Magic Johnson.

“He’s the one who got me out of my slump,” Barnes said.

However he has gotten out, he is thriving.

“Matt is playing tremendous basketball,” Lavin said. “All of his skills and abilities have been put on display. He’s able to play inside with his back to the basket, step away and knock down threes.

“A lot of people feel kids don’t get better in our program. It makes you feel good when you see a Billy Knight improving over five years or a Matt Barnes playing the way he has. And obviously Earl [Watson] last year.

“Matt has made quantum leaps every year. And he was on the on the athletic director’s honor roll last semester, after being ineligible because of academics, two years ago.”

Where UCLA goes from here is hard to say.

It’s hard to tell if Bozeman will be ready for the rigors of March.

On one trip down the floor, he threw a seeing-eye pass to Gadzuric under the basket. On another, in the crucial final minutes, he threw the ball away.

Some of those passes he made in high school, you can’t make in college.

“It’s something I’ve talked to him about and Jason’s talked to him about,” Barnes said. “He knows.”

Just as they all know they’ll need a point guard in March who plays like a veteran--even if he isn’t one.