EUGENE – The UCLA men’s basketball team has had more false starts this season than a football team starting five freshmen on the offensive line.
Case in point: the Bruins’ woeful opening in their three-point loss at Oregon State on Thursday, when the Beavers jumped to an 7-0 lead.
On Saturday, UCLA stormed out of the gate, leading Oregon by nine less than five minutes in the game before taking a 13-point into halftime.
The only problem?
In college basketball there are two starts, and the Bruins could not recharge.
The Ducks went on a 15-2 run to open the second half and pulled away from UCLA with some clutch free-throw shooting to ruin the Bruins’ trip to the Beaver State with a 75-68 win in front of 10,830 at Matthew Knight Arena.
“It’s pretty devastating right now to lose after you have a 13-point lead going into the second half,” senior guard Jerime Anderson said. “That’s where we need to become a better team and grow as a team and be able to come out on top and get this win. We were spotted 13 points in 20 minutes and we weren’t able to come out with it.”
Anderson’s foul of Oregon guard Garrett Sim during a 3-point attempt spurred the Ducks early in the half and had the crowd building on the frenzy caused during a halftime ceremony celebrating the school’s Rose Bowl-winning football team. Sim hit the free throw to make it a seven-point game, followed less than a minute later with another 3-pointer, and by the time UCLA stopped to breathe, the Ducks had tied the game at 39. Oregon took its first lead with 7 minutes, 47 seconds left in the game and led for the duration.
“When they had their roll going, the crowd definitely – I don’t know if it factored in for us, but for them their intensity level definitely went up,” said sophomore forward Travis Wear, who led the team with 17 points. We could sense it. Unfortunately we couldn’t stop it right away. They got a couple buckets and kept rolling.”
Exactly what UCLA did so right in the first half, it did wrong in the second.
After forcing the Ducks into 22.6 percent shooting for the first 20 minutes with improved energy and sound defensive rotations, the Bruins wilted in the second half under the face of Oregon’s pressure. The Ducks shot 50 percent in the second half, including 5-of-9 from 3-point range, as E.J. Singler took control.
Singler, who had a career-high 24 points in the teams’ previous matchup in last season’s Pac-10 Tournament – a 17-point Oregon win – topped his previous best with 26 points, capitalizing on frequent trips to the free-throw line.
Singler hit 16-of-17 free throws and the Ducks converted 28-of-32 as a team, while UCLA tightened up at the line, making just 10-of-21.
“They really got it to Singler in some of his sweet spots on the floor,” Anderson said. “He was able to work them very well. He shot 17 free throws today and we just didn’t have an answer for him in the second half.”
After the pivotal two-game trip left them at 3-4 in Pac-12 play, the Bruins continue to search for answers.
“Obviously this was a huge setback,” Anderson said. “We’re 3-4 now. I’ll let those numbers speak for themselves.”