Glass Is Dismissed by Bruins

The game was there to be grabbed, and Cal grabbed it.

One offensive rebound after another, freshman Leon Powe either bulled his way past or spun away from T.J. Cummings and the other UCLA defenders to grab the ball and either score or go to the line.

“We got beat on rebounds,” Cummings said. “We were doing a good job initially, then broke down later.”

UCLA led by one point at halftime and trailed by only one with eight minutes left, but the Bears took over down the stretch and handed the Bruins a 76-62 defeat in front of 11,877 Saturday at Haas Pavilion.

After opening the Pacific 10 season 5-0, UCLA has lost three games in a row, all by double digits, to Arizona, Stanford and California.

Powe, a 6-foot-8, 245-pound forward, became the latest exhibit in UCLA Coach Ben Howland’s campaign for a tougher, brawnier Bruin team.

Powe finished with 19 points and 14 rebounds, with four offensive rebounds among the nine he pulled down in the second half.

“He took the game over,” Howland said. “My assistant said you can see on the replay him knocking our guys under the basket.

“At least three times they missed foul shots and then got the rebound. The easiest block-out you can have is when you’re inside in a free-throw situation, because you know where he is. That was really disappointing.”

UCLA (9-6, 5-3) had six more rebounds than Cal in the first half, but the Bears made it even at the end and had eight offensive boards in the second half.

Amit Tamir had two of them, scoring on a reverse layup off an offensive rebound early in the second half as the Bears started to assert themselves after trailing by three points.

The Bears (8-8, 4-3) took the first big lead of the game, jumping ahead, 14-2, by making the first four three-pointers they tried.

But the defense of Josiah Johnson off the bench helped contain Tamir, who scored 19 points, but only seven in the second half.

Powe was the player UCLA couldn’t counter.

UCLA trailed by one, 51-50, after a three-pointer by Trevor Ariza with 8:17 left, but Powe scored 12 points the rest of the way, beating the Bruins on the offensive boards again and again.

“He’s some big body. He’s a great player,” said the slender Ariza, whose Westchester High team defeated Powe’s Oakland Tech team in the state championship game last year.

Besides his work inside, Powe had a big basket outside, making a 15-foot jumper as the shot clock ran out to stretch a six-point lead to eight with 2:46 left.

Powe might have had an even bigger game against UCLA if he hadn’t missed nine of 16 free throws.

“Leon already realized if he’d made his free throws, he might have had 30,” Cal Coach Ben Braun said.

The Bruins knew they would have matchup problems inside against Powe and Tamir, a 6-10 center who can make the three-pointer.

Howland changed his mind Saturday morning and started Michael Fey at center instead of Ryan Hollins, but his hunch didn’t pay off and Hollins ended up playing 22 minutes to Fey’s eight.

The best option defensively turned out to be Johnson, who played 19 minutes and helped contain Tamir.

UCLA’s problem on the boards has been consistent, but the Bruins aren’t only being outmuscled on the boards, they’re also being outworked and outfoxed.

Ariza said he believed players were concentrating so much on going after the ball they failed to block out.

But even when they tried to block out, they were getting beaten.

Cummings said he complained unsuccessfully to officials that Powe was setting up on the block on free throws.

Powe said he just outthought the Bruins.

“They were leaning on me, so we could just spin off them,” he said. “I let them lean on me, then I released.”

There were other problems for UCLA, including a continuing difficulty scoring in the halfcourt offense, particularly against a zone, which Cal employed at times, as Arizona and Stanford did so successfully.

“To me, we just can’t make shots. We’re getting open shots, we’re just not knocking them down,” said Dijon Thompson, who led UCLA with 17 points.

By the end, Cal’s students, just like Stanford’s, took pleasure in taunting the supposedly new-look Bruins a year after Steve Lavin’s disastrous final season, chanting, “We miss Lavin,” as time ran out.