Hardened UCLA team peaks with win at Arizona


The arc of the UCLA basketball team’s season couldn’t be much better.

The Bruins were too talented not to announce their presence early. Their low point came at the perfect time to cure their biggest ailment and, apparently, launch them into a torrid late-season stretch.

UCLA punctuated its seven-game winning streak with its most significant victory of the season Saturday, snapping Arizona’s 21-game home winning streak with a 77-72 win at McKale Center. Two games shy of the regular season’s end is a fairly ideal time to notch your biggest win.

The Bruins have truly made strides on defense, something it realized after consecutive losses to Arizona and USC in late January. They won tonight despite making 8 of 26 shots from 3-point range and scoring just nine fast break points. UCLA has unlocked myriad ways to beat teams, the kind of versatility required to make a deep run in the NCAA tournament.

Sure, UCLA won’t win the Pac-12 regular season championship unless Oregon loses to Oregon State and Arizona loses to Arizona State next week. But the Bruins can take solace in having won each of the three rematches with the Pac-12 opponents that beat them the first time around. None was more difficult than what was achieved Saturday in Tucson.

The NCAA tournament committee that projected UCLA as a No. 4 seed two weeks ago can’t treat the Bruins the same way after this. With Gonzaga dropping its first game of the season Saturday, perhaps the door has reopened for a No. 1 seed. UCLA has certainly played its way out of the spot the tournament committee inexplicably placed it in Feb. 11.

By losing a third of their first nine conference games, UCLA has been playing from behind. Now the playing field is level – and UCLA has more momentum than any team in its conference.

By defeating Arizona Saturday, UCLA massively increased the importance of the Pac-12 tournament. RPI, strength of schedule and the rest of the metrics that don’t favor UCLA won’t be enough to keep the Bruins from earning the conference’s best seed in the NCAA tournament if it wins the Pac-12 tournament.

Oregon, Arizona and UCLA could be playing for the No. 1 seed in the West region when they converge on Las Vegas in a week and a half.