Losing to This Team Not Exactly a Crying Shame

Ryan Hollins set up a folding chair in the middle of a quiet locker room, his back to the door, a white towel on his head.

He was asked how he felt.

What happened next spoke to the month, to the moment, to the madness.

“It hurts, I can’t really explain it,” Hollins said.

He pulled the towel low. He began weeping.

Then he grabbed the blue “UCLA” on his white jersey and proudly puffed it out, again and again.

It was, indeed, a ride they will not soon forget.

It ended, truly, on a night they cannot forget soon enough.

A couple of hours from their shining moment Monday, UCLA experienced a moment from “The Shining.”

A stronger team jumped them. A smarter team mugged them. A better team beat them.

They were left weak-kneed, red-eyed and runner-upped after a 73-57 beating by national champion Florida in a game that wasn’t that close.

A few steps from the end of their charmed spring stroll, UCLA was caught in a downpour.

Florida rained down quicker hands and faster feet.

“They wanted it more, they played harder,” Lorenzo Mata said through tears.

Florida showered better athletes who did not flinch.

“Their defense was just as good, they did the things we do,” Arron Afflalo said through more tears.

In the end, the RCA Dome poured orange and blue confetti all over the Bruins as they gamely stood in line for the longest postgame handshake in their lives.

Said Cedric Bozeman: “To get so close, we really wanted that confetti to be blue and gold.”

Said Mata: “I knew we had to shake hands and be professional, but I just wanted to get out of there.”

They began the night as one of the most unlikely teams in UCLA history to make the national title game. They ended it as only the second UCLA team to lose one.

And they wept because, among other things, they were trying to win it for recently hospitalized John Wooden.

“Every time we step on that floor, we represent him,” Arron Afflalo said. “We play for him.”

This time, however, they didn’t play very long.

This game was never a game.

From the opening tip, three truths emerged.

Florida was Gonzaga with more athletes. Florida was Memphis with smarter athletes. Florida was a whole lot better than LSU.

“They were unbelievable,” Hollins said.

You knew things were different when Florida scored its first three baskets in the lane, staring down the Bruins, running over the Bruins.

You knew things were different when, six of the first seven times the Bruins tried to do the same thing, they were knocked on their rears.

During one three-minute stretch midway through the first half, the UCLA offense accounted for a two-foot airball and two wild missed jumpers while having three shots blocked.

At that point, Joakim Noah’s ponytail was everywhere, Ben Howland’s voice was nowhere and the Bruins were cooked.

“I think they laid down a little bit,” Florida center Al Horford said.

The intimidators had become the intimidated, with Florida having 10 blocks and seven steals while UCLA had one block and three steals.

The disciplined became the wild ones, throwing up quick shots and dumb shots, forgetting that they overcame a equally large deficit to Gonzaga with the sublime, not the ridiculous.

Jordan Farmar took more than twice as many shots as anyone else on the team.

Afflalo, on the other hand, couldn’t even get the ball in the first half, going scoreless in three attempts, and wound up making only three baskets the entire night.

“They played as a team, they didn’t have one guy just jacking up shots, they stayed together,” Hollins said.

He insisted he didn’t mean that as a rip of his Bruins, saying: “Oh no, I thought we also played as a team. I love our team. They were just a better team tonight.’

But, clearly, as many suspected, these Bruins still have a lot to learn.

They need to learn to play better on the open floor, which is where Florida won the game. They need more shooters. They need a stronger big man.

They need to figure out how to win games when their defense isn’t overpowering, when a team like Florida is deft enough to commit only six turnovers with 21 assists.

What they need most is what everyone thought they needed when this unexpectedly splendid run began.

They need one more season together.

With only Hollins and Bozeman leaving, with Josh Shipp returning from injury, with a couple of top recruits showing up, they will have that season.

“The biggest thing when you get beat and you lose a game ... it’s learning from and responding to defeat, disappointment,” Howland said. “How you respond to that means everything.”

The sports world probably will respond by making UCLA a preseason top-five team next season.

It’s up to the Bruins to do the rest.

Leave it to Howland to set the tone even before the previous song has ended.

Walking into the tear-soaked Bruin locker room after his news conference Monday night, he spotted Hollins’ head still covered in a towel.

He briskly walked past the center, leaned over, and yanked the towel off his head and dropped it to the ground.

“Get this off,” he said, exposing Hollins’ red eyes and pursed lips to the media.

Hollins shrugged. All around him, the younger Bruins stiffened.

“We’ll go away and get stronger, get better,” Mata said. “And we’ll be back.”

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous Plaschke columns, go to latimes.com/plaschke.