UCLA not voted off the island

And now the Bruins get to play in the Pacific.

After defeating No. 19 Georgia Tech, 88-73, Wednesday night in the finals of the EA Sports Maui Invitational, fifth-ranked UCLA gets two days off on the beach in Maui.

For the second consecutive night, four Bruins scored in double figures. Junior Arron Afflalo led the way with 19 points while point guard Darren Collison had 15 points and seven assists.

The Bruins (4-0) also defeated 20th-ranked Kentucky while winning their first Maui title, and they did it while controlling tempo, establishing a four-deep bench and playing a physical running game.

Collison was named the tournament’s most valuable player and was joined on the all-tournament team by Afflalo, but Coach Ben Howland also got to see sophomores Mike Roll and Alfred Aboya and freshmen Russell Westbrook and James Keefe play important minutes.

There was even a Cameroonian flag being waved in the stands to honor Aboya and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute.

“Our whole bench, I’m really, really happy how good the bench played,” Howland said. “We didn’t skip a beat when the bench came in. Notably Michael Roll made some big shots.”

UCLA missed its first four shots Wednesday night and still shot 60.6% from the field in the first half. Howland got knocked out of his chair midway through the period and stomped his foot when Westbrook missed a layup in the final five seconds of the half. “But my knee hurts,” Howland said. “I took a charge.”

One reason the Bruins were so offensively efficient was because Roll found his rhythm. The 6-foot-5 swingman has outside shooting as his primary talent yet he had made only three of his 11 three-point attempts before last night and only five of his 15 overall attempts.

A 13-6 run had given UCLA a 16-10 lead and it was in part because of Roll, who had been struggling defensively in Howland’s man-to-man. Roll made a three-pointer and a foul-line jump shot and scored all of his 13 points in the first half on five-of-seven shooting.

In the first three minutes of the game, Josh Shipp (once) and Afflalo (twice) missed well-guarded three-point attempts. Meanwhile Georgia Tech got three offensive rebounds and took a 4-0 lead.

“We had to settle down,” said Howland, who called a timeout with 16:45 left in the half. “Our first four shots were threes, a couple of them were rushed, but we’re a young team too, so it’s a little natural. That’s fine. I guess I had our guys too amped up.”

That kind of methodical perimeter offense isn’t suited to the Bruins and their offensive sluggishness briefly seemed to carry over on defense. Three times in the first five minutes the Yellow Jackets scored on offensive rebounds.

It wasn’t until Shipp made a dunk and Afflalo followed with a layup that the Bruins began to force a pace they preferred.

And the Bruins were seriously off and running.

Aboya banked in a driving layup, Mbah a Moute was led perfectly by Collison for a fastbreak score, and Afflalo and Collison made three-pointers in proper rhythm. Shipp and Roll got assists and big shouts of “Yes!” from Howland.

The Bruins led by as much as 43-26, but went a little nervously to the locker room with a 47-36 advantage and the memory that Georgia Tech had rallied from 19 down to Memphis in the semifinals Tuesday to upset the 12th-ranked Tigers.

However, the Bruins led by as much as 22 in the second half and the Yellow Jackets (5-1) could get only as close as nine points, and only because they made the first shot of the half.

With 2:16 left and UCLA ahead, 79-64, the 6-foot-1 Collison and the 6-foot-8 Jeremis Smith collided so hard that Smith was knocked groggy and had to be helped off the floor.

Collison would take no credit for his MVP trophy either.

“Any one of us could have it,” Collison said. “I’m more proud of the victory we had. This is a big victory for us.”

diane.pucin@latimes.com