An easy victory for the Bruins

There was an occasional hard foul given by Western Illinois, a hip check that knocked down Russell Westbrook, a trio of Leathernecks who collapsed Kevin Love into a howling heap.

But mostly Western Illinois left little impression on the 8,189 who braved the rain and traffic and came to Pauley Pavilion on Tuesday to see eighth-ranked UCLA beat Western Illinois, 77-52.

The Leathernecks arrived about 40 minutes before tip-off. It took them 90 minutes to travel from their Los Angeles airport hotel. It took less than 14 minutes in the game for them to trail by 21 points and show they had little to offer besides an unthreatening zone defense.

Freshman Love led UCLA (10-1) with 16 points and seven rebounds and he was a perfect five for five from the field (including one of one from three-point range) and five for five from the foul line. Westbrook had eight points, seven assists and only one turnover.

In last Saturday’s 89-49 win over Idaho State, walk-on senior Matt Lee scored a last-second 40-footer and left the court to a big ovation.

Tuesday it was walk-on Kevin Schmidt, a 6-foot-7 water polo player who also fills in as a basketball practice body, who tipped in an offensive rebound at the buzzer and scored his first basket as a Bruin. Those two points made UCLA the second-half winner, but just barely, 35-33.

The Leathernecks (3-7) also tied UCLA in rebounding, 30-30, a statistic forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute said he wasn’t happy about. “They got a lot of tips. They sneak in, get rebounds,” Mbah a Moute said. “We did a pretty good job in the second half but we’ve got to get better at it, boxing out.”

Besides the rebounds, the only other negative Coach Ben Howland found was that senior center Lorenzo Mata-Real hurt his left shoulder at some point in the first half.

“It’s just a bruise, hopefully,” Howland said. “It happened in the first half I’m pretty sure. It doesn’t seem like it’s anything too earth shattering or serious.”

Howland said he asked Mata-Real at halftime if he was hurt.

“I said, ‘Are you OK?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’m OK.’ When you get the adrenaline flowing you think you’ll be fine. But we put him through all the tests, did manipulation of the joint and if there was tearing I think we would have picked up on that. The trainer thought he took an elbow to the shoulder. Lorenzo doesn’t remember what happened.”

In fact, Mata-Real played nine of his 19 minutes in the second half, during which he scored all four of his points including one thunderous slam dunk.

But point guard Darren Collison played nearly 39 minutes on a sprained knee in November that sidelined him for five weeks, so Howland is nervous about any aches and pains.

The Bruins were ahead 42-19 at halftime. They were ahead 28-7 when Mbah a Moute rebounded a Mata-Real miss, expanded the lead to 37-13 on Josh Shipp’s second three-pointer of the game and were up 42-17 when Alfred Aboya made a jump shot.

While Howland said he didn’t think UCLA lost its focus after getting ahead early, Collison and Love thought differently.

“Sometimes you do lose a little bit of focus,” Love said. “It just happens whether you know it or not.”

“It’s hard to play against teams like this,” Collison said, “to not look ahead.”

Howland also said he thought the Bruins played well. “We were very unselfish as a team and did a good job playing hard defensively,” he said.

He did regret that the Bruins missed some easy open shots in the second half after they made 13 of their 21 first-half attempts, saying “It seems like we were stuck on the number 62 forever.”

Not forever, but 5:28 did go by between Mata-Real’s offensive rebound that put UCLA ahead 62-35 and Mbah a Moute’s fast break layup.

Western Illinois Coach Derek Thomas said UCLA played “physical” defense. “We tried to crowd the ball and pack the paint,” Thomas said, “but they hit a lot of shots early that really hurt us.”

And that was the point, Bruins forward Josh Shipp said. “Get up early, put it away,” Shipp said. Done.

diane.pucin@latimes.com