With two minutes left in the first half, the momentum began to shift ever so slightly. A 7-0 run by the UCLA Bruins (17-10, 10-5 Pac-12) provided a small spark against the No. 2 Oregon Ducks, which found presence in the paint without star power forward Ruthy Hebard.
But the persistent and aggressive Bruins, lead by a 29-point performance from senior forward Kennedy Burke, mounted a comeback that lasted until midway through fourth quarter when they finally took the lead, capitalizing on a 74-69 victory over the Ducks.
“Needless to say, I’m quite disappointed,” head coach Kelly Graves said. “They wanted it more than us. You could tell.”
Here are three takeaways from Friday’s game…
Bruins and Burke Stage Comeback
The Bruin’s offense, lead by Burke’s impressive performance, picked up midway through the second quarter and did not let off the gas. Despite shutting down some of the nation’s most powerful post players this season  likes of Teaira McCowan of Mississippi State, or Megan Huff of Utah, the grueling, and at times chippy, play of the Bruins wore down the frustrated Ducks in the second half.
With mid-range jumpers and powerful downhill drives through the lane, it was Burke who made her presence felt most emphatically in the post, shooting 12-17 and gathering eight rebounds.
Burke also shot 2-of-3 from 3-point range, helping the Bruins shoot 35 percent from deep compared to the Duck’s 23 percent.
Ducks Shooting Struggles
Coming in as the most efficient 3-point shooting team in the nation, averaging 43 percent shooting from deep, the Ducks shot a dismal 6-of-26 in the game. No team has had a higher shooting percentage from 3-point range in a game against the Ducks this season, but on Friday, the Bruins did just that.
“We had a bad shooting night,” Graves said. “I don’t know what it is but for the last three games we have not shot the ball well.”
Each of Oregon’s 3-point shots was highly contested by the Bruins man-to-man defense, which brought the Ducks’ shooting percentage down from 53 in the first half to 35 in the second.
Redshirt sophomore Erin Boley, the Ducks’ leading scorer in the game with 20 points on 8-of-11 shooting, said the problems began after halftime, when her team came out sluggish and let its guard down against the tight defense of the Bruins.
 
Ducks without Ruthy
Despite the absence of Hebard, who sustained a knee injury in Monday’s loss to the No. 12 Oregon State Beavers, the Ducks came out strong in the post, intentionally focusing on their weakest point. By shifting shooting guards like Boley into the post, the Ducks dominated UCLA off the glass, gathering offensive rebounds and scoring more than half their points in the paint. This provided space to spread the ball to players on the perimeter.
But as the game pressed on, the absence of Hebard was felt more and more as the Ducks failed to gather offensive rebounds in the final minutes of the fourth quarter.
“Down the stretch we didn’t have our hammer,” said Graves, who said his team’s inability to execute screens without Hebard became more prominent as the toil of the game became more apparent. “We just don’t have a lot of players who can beat people off the dribble. We just don’t.”
 Follow Bryce Dole on Twitter @DoleBryce