Not Much Is Enough for UCLA

Jahsha Bluntt’s fingers curled, his wrist cocked, his three-pointer was perfect and his Delaware State Hornets were within six points of 18th-ranked UCLA with 13 minutes 43 seconds left in the second half of a stultifying college basketball game at Pauley Pavilion.

About 7,247 fans who were at their loudest when it was announced Fresno State’s football team was leading USC, 21-10, murmured a few boos as Bluntt, a Los Angeles Fairfax graduate, shook his head and smiled.

It was a small victory for the Hornet junior, but it wasn’t a turning point. UCLA took the undistinguished win, 56-37, Saturday night and the Bruins (3-0) will travel undefeated to New York for Wednesday’s NIT Season Tip-Off tournament semifinal against 12th-ranked Memphis.

UCLA Coach Ben Howland earned his 200th coaching victory. It will not be remembered as his most satisfying, even though Delaware State recorded the fewest points at Pauley Pavilion since Oregon State was held to 35 on Jan. 7, 1966.

Howland wasn’t happy with the team’s flurry of mistakes in the first half, but he accepted the sloppy victory from his young team that had played its first three games in only five days.

“We were up 13-0 quick and I was feeling good,” Howland said. “Then we had numerous turnovers, 12 in the first half. That was a key stat.”

Before Saturday, the Hornets had last played against Duke in the first round of the 2005 NCAA tournament. Delaware State of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference lost by only 11 and Howland said he had been impressed when watching film because, he said, “Duke only led 28-26 with three minutes to go in the first half.”

But even with UCLA missing starting point guard Jordan Farmar (sprained right ankle) and last season’s starting center Michael Fey (sprained left shoulder), the Hornets began horribly.

Freshman guard Darren Collison got his first start as a Bruin and his team played enthusiastically for the first six minutes. The Bruins made six of their first seven shots, shut out the Hornets and took a 13-0 lead while running a lay-up drill interrupted once by a three-pointer by Arron Afflalo.

Yet UCLA needed a last-second three-pointer from Cedric Bozeman, who had 15 points, to hold on to a 27-17 lead by halftime. In the final six minutes the Bruins turned the ball over seven times and Ryan Hollins missed a layup. A dull silence took over the Pauley crowd and Howland’s foot stomps echoed.

Bozeman said the Bruins had a hard time finding a rhythm against the deliberately paced Hornets.

“We couldn’t push the ball,” he said.

Afflalo noted that with Farmar sidelined, UCLA had only one true point guard, the rookie Collison. “So we were a little out of sync,” Afflalo said.

A 21-6 rebounding advantage in the first half was offset by the turnovers. In a span of two minutes, freshman forward Michael Roll’s pass to backup center Lorenzo Mata was intercepted, as was a Mata pass outside to Roll.

And there was no renewed energy from the Bruins in the second half. They could never build the lead to more than 13 points until the final three minutes as the Hornets tried to run down the shot clock whenever possible.

“It feels like we’re playing an NBA schedule,” said Bozeman, who missed all of last season with a knee injury. “But we can’t afford turnovers like that.”

As Afflalo noted, the final score was not indicative of the game’s tenor. “They are a scrappy team,” he said. “That final score doesn’t speak to how the game went. But we’re happy anyway.”