There were several moments during Saturday afternoon’s matchup between Oregon and UCLA where physicality and depth took its toll on the Ducks.
Oregon (8-10, 1-5 Pacific-10 Conference) was coming off its first win in exactly a month, with the hopes that a little more Matthew Knight Arena magic could help the team to a second consecutive conference victory.
It wasn’t in the cards for the Ducks, however, as the Bruins (11-6, 3-2 Pac-10) used an 8-2 run late in the second half to seal the victory. First-year head coach Dana Altman was outwardly upset during several of the Ducks’ timeouts and couldn’t quite put his finger on what the problem was down the stretch.
“Some of it was communication, some of it was we lost a little step there,” Altman said. “I don’t know if we were fatigued or what, but our defense didn’t have the same bite in the second half as it did in the first half.”
Oregon jumped out to 4-0 lead in the opening minutes off easy buckets from E.J. Singler and Malcolm Armstead. Less than five minutes later, UCLA grabbed its first lead of the game off a Malcolm Lee jumper but would not lead again in the half.
At one point, the Ducks stretched a 12-point lead off a 16-3 run, which forced UCLA coach Ben Howland to burn two quick timeouts, and it appeared Oregon could take a sizeable lead into intermission. The Bruins came out of the second timeout refocused, and used a 9-2 run to close out the half.
Singler mentioned the importance of big runs after the USC win on Thursday, but his team wasn’t able to respond the way it had on opening night.
“I don’t know that they wore us down,” Singler said, “but we didn’t box out and their big boy killed us.”
Singler was referring to Bruins center Joshua Smith, listed at 6-foot-10 and 305 pounds. A true freshman from Kent, Wash., Smith was extremely effective during his 24 minutes of action. With the much smaller Singler and junior college transfer Tyrone Nared attempting to harness Smith, little could be done to slow, or even faze, him.
Smith finished the game 6 of 7 from the field for 15 points and grabbed nine rebounds (five offensive) in the winning effort. Singler also finished the game with 15 points and four rebounds.
After halftime, neither team was able to establish a decent lead through the first 10 minutes, but eventually UCLA found a way to get some separation. Lee and junior Jerime Anderson sparked an 8-0 run to give the Bruins a 46-40 lead with 9:16 remaining.
Though Oregon was able to cut that lead to one on an Armstead bucket two minutes later, Lee’s hot shooting hand would prove to be too much for the Ducks to handle. The junior guard scored eight of UCLA’s next 11 points to finished with a game-high 18 points.
Several of Lee’s looks were uncontested, which frustrated Altman.
“We can’t give up easy baskets,” Altman said. “We’ve got to fight our tails off on the boards, we’ve got to make simple plays on the offensive end.
“When we do that, we’ve been fairly effective. When we haven’t, we’ve really struggled.”
Oregon continued to struggle shooting the ball (37.8 percent for the game) but got some strong minutes from Jeremy Jacob, who scored 12 points on 6 of 11 shooting during his 17 minutes of action. Nared chipped in nine points and a career-high eight rebounds, while Armstead also finished with nine points.
For UCLA, who returns home for games against Cal and Stanford next weekend, Lazeric Jones and Anderson rounded out the Bruins double-digit scorers with 12 and 15 points, respectively.
Looking ahead, the Ducks will take on Oregon State (8-9, 3-3 Pac-10) at Gill Coliseum on Saturday afternoon. For his team to compete in that game and the 11 others remaining on the regular season schedule, Altman knows Oregon has no room for mistakes.
“We’ve all got to play well on all cylinders,” Altman said. “Our margin for error is not very big.”
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