Two may not play at Oregon

It took careful film watching to determine when Luc Richard Mbah a Moute received his concussion in UCLA’s 72-63 loss Saturday to USC. It was obvious when Lorenzo Mata-Real received his.

Because of the two head-rattling injuries, Coach Ben Howland said Mata-Real was doubtful when eighth-ranked UCLA (16-2, 4-1) plays a Pacific 10 Conference game Thursday at Oregon (12-6, 3-3). Mbah a Moute’s availability is considered questionable.

Mata-Real took a charge against the Trojans’ Daniel Hackett and his head was knocked on the floor by Hackett’s knee. Howland said Mbah a Moute ran into USC’s Keith Wilkinson on an offensive play.

“On the film, I’ve watched it a number of times, Luc went up, got his head caught in Wilkinson’s chest, caught his head scraping across,” Howland said. “Luc hit his neck, got a shot blocked, got it back and kind of keeled over. We didn’t know he was completely out of it and there were four plays he normally doesn’t make, three on defense, one on offense. The adrenaline took over and he tried to keep going.”

Howland said Mata-Real still had a headache at 6 p.m. Monday.

“The doctors do computerized tests,” Howland said. “ . . . If the headache had gone away he could have worked out after 6 Tuesday. I’m not optimistic about Lorenzo.”

Howland said by using the same computerized program Mbah a Moute was “a little further ahead,” though Mbah a Moute didn’t practice Tuesday.

If neither Mbah a Moute nor Mata-Real is available against Oregon, Howland said freshman Chace Stanback and sophomore Nikola Dragovic would get more minutes. Stanback played less than a minute against USC and Dragovic played three minutes.

“I should have put Chace in more,” Howland said. “Josh [Shipp], Darren [Collison], Russell [Westbrook], they all played all the rest of the [second] half and that was just poor coaching. You can’t expect guys to play that long. Some of the decision making was probably fatigue and that was my fault for not giving guys a little more rest.”

Collison and Shipp both said they weren’t tired, but Collison said he also thought Stanback and Dragovic are ready to be tested. “I remember my freshman year, when Cedric Bozeman was out, me and Michael Roll had a chance to step up,” Collison said. “That’s when you have your coming-out party and step out. Good players do it every day in practice and then it’s a matter of opportunities.”

Howland cited two things in particular that he was unhappy with in the USC loss. “Our transition defense was really poor,” he said. “Also, our shot selection when we had a four-point lead, 57-53, we took three shots when we still had 25 seconds left on the shot clock, three not good shots.

“But I think this team has always responded when we had a loss or didn’t play well.”

The last time the Bruins lost two games in a row was Feb. 11 and 19, 2006, at Washington and at USC.

UCLA shot only 64.9% from the foul line in the first six games, but in the last 12 games it has made 75%. The Bruins, once ninth in the conference in foul shooting, have moved up to fourth.

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diane.pucin@latimes.com