Hard-headed Bruins crush Cougars

This was not the Bruins of this season.

UCLA was patient and plotting, almost calculating. Lee and sophomore guard Jerime Anderson, who had 10 points and four assists, fought through a soft Washington State full-court press and marched the ball up the floor and into the lane, only to pull it back out.

Unlike in losses to Oregon and Cal earlier this year, when the Bruins had double-digit leads yet continued to force the issue and watched the leads disappear, UCLA passed over wide-open shots and committed to maintain the cushion.

Exhibit A: With 15:12 left in the second half and the Bruins sporting a 17-point lead, Honeycutt found himself on an island on the top left of the arc but moved the ball to senior forward Nikola Dragovic for a 3-pointer and a 20-point advantage.

"I was wide open, but coach always preaches extra pass, and I like to pass," Honeycutt said. "Everybody's saying I have this good first half, but there wasn't any need for more shots. Klay Thompson was over-guarding me, and I was trying to get my teammates open. There's no need for that. I'm not trying to go up there and jack up shots.
"I can hear (head coach Ben Howland's) voice in my head; 'Hey, patience ... patience.'"

Howland, who was dealt a bit of bad news with senior forward James Keefe's decision to have season-ending shoulder surgery before the game, practiced a bit of patience himself early after the Cougars jumped to a 10-6 lead.

Thompson, the Pac-10's second-leading scorer, hit a 3-pointer with 16:21 left in the first half and UCLA switched from the 2-3 zone defense to man-to-man for two possessions, forcing two Cougar misses.

But Howland went back to the zone defense and marked Thompson and teammate Reggie Moore, who scored 24 in the teams' first matchup.

It worked: Thompson went 2-for-9 and finished with eight points and six turnovers, with zero assists, and Moore finished with just 11 points on 3-of-5 shooting.

"They were hot - every time they came down, they were scoring, hitting outside shots," Lee said. "We threw man-to-man in there, just to throw a wrench in their system. We ended up getting a stop and went right back to the 2-3 - we were trying to throw them off, and that's what we did."

If there was one black eye on the game for UCLA it was, well, a black eye.

With 4:23 left in the first half, freshman forward Reeves Nelson threw down a beautiful one-handed flush and briefly held on to the back of the rim before crashing to the ground head-first. Nelson didn't have time to brace himself for impact and his right eye socket smashed directly into the ground, leaving a pool of blood and a nasty scar that required 15 stitches.

This, after suffering a concussion against Cal on Feb. 6 and an eye-gouge against Kansas on Dec. 6.

"He's going to look pretty scary with all these injuries after a while," Howland said. "He had one recently, but thank God he has a hard head."
On Thursday night, he wasn't the only one.