UCLA Buys It in Bulk

Long after the final buzzer had sounded Saturday afternoon at Pauley Pavilion, Arron Afflalo kept hitting the replay button in his mind.

He could see California guard Ayinde Ubaka with the ball in his hands in the frontcourt, Cal clinging to a two-point lead with less than 40 seconds to play. Afflalo could see himself strip Ubaka of the ball, see it bounce free, see teammate Darren Collison unable to reach it, see the ball come back to Ubaka, who then banked in a four-footer.

UCLA never recovered, losing, 68-61, to end the Bruins’ eight-game winning streak. The loss also dropped 11th-ranked UCLA (11-2) to 1-1 in the Pacific 10 Conference.

“We had picked up our play,” Afflalo said. “We had the momentum and the crowd was behind us. Good things would have happened if we could have gotten that ball.”

Perhaps. But that’s not why the Bruins lost.

They lost because their injury-depleted frontcourt looked feeble against Cal’s powerful front line. UCLA was outrebounded, 32-25, and out-muscled all afternoon.

They lost because they seemed a step slow in their defensive rotation, allowing the Golden Bears to repeatedly find an open man. Consequently, California shot 52.2% even though its leader Leon Powe, who had been averaging 20.7 points a game, was held to five on one-for-seven shooting.

And finally, the Bruins lost because they couldn’t do enough on offense. They shot a season-worst 36.7%, making 18 of 49 attempts, including five of 17 from behind the three-point line.

Guard Jordan Farmar, who had been averaging 14.9 points, made two of 11 shots and scored six points. His jump shot seemed to have lost much of its arc, the ball coming in on a flat trajectory that steered it short of its mark.

Although he refused to make excuses, Farmar conceded that he was affected by his sprained right ankle, an injury that had forced him out of UCLA’s previous game, against Stanford on Thursday.

“I have heavy tape on it and a brace on top of that,” Farmar said. “That made it a little stiff and hard to move, but that’s part of the game.”

Just as damaging to the Bruin offense was the lack of a scoring threat inside. Containing Powe didn’t mean as much because UCLA wasn’t any better. Center Lorenzo Mata was actually worse, missing all five of his shots.

Powe’s point total was the second-lowest of his college career, but his coach, Ben Braun, wasn’t complaining. Powe had a game-high 12 rebounds. No one else on either side was in double figures.

“I told Leon that this was one of the best games he’s played for us,” Braun said. “He made our team better by getting the 12 rebounds and passing the ball. It wasn’t a typical Leon Powe game offensively.”

The Bruins were unable to counter Powe on the boards with their most effective rebounder, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute. He came into the game averaging 9.2 rebounds, second-best in the conference, but got only three while playing only 23 minutes because of foul trouble.

Mata was UCLA’s leading rebounder, but he had only five.

Making up for Powe’s lack of scoring were Ubaka (18 points), guards Omar Wilkes and Richard Midgley (12 apiece) and forward DeVon Hardin (10). Wilkes and Midgley were both two for three from three-point range.

Afflalo led UCLA with 19 points.

It was a momentous victory for Cal (8-3, 2-0 in conference), its first win against a nationally ranked team since 1999, and its first over a nationally ranked team on the road since 1995.

For the Bruins to hang on to their high national ranking, they are going to have to be more competitive in the frontcourt.

“We are a guard-oriented team,” Afflalo said. “There is no mystery about that.”

And no apparent solution yet.