The No. 5 UCLA Bruins weren’t ready to surrender their position atop the Pacific-10 Conference just yet.
In a battle for first place in the conference, defending conference champion UCLA jumped out to a big lead and held on in the second half against No. 9 Oregon, winning 69-57 in front of 12,113 at Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles.
The Bruins vindicated their first loss of the season, a 68-66 setback against the Ducks in Eugene on Jan. 6 that dropped them from No. 1 in the nation, by shooting a scorching 57 percent in the game Thursday and outscoring the much smaller Ducks in the paint 34-18.
The loss matches Oregon’s worst of the season.
“They did play on fire and we knew they were going to come after us,” Oregon coach Ernie Kent said in a broadcast interview. “I look at the last four games and we’ve been not starting out these games like we had earlier in the year in terms of our toughness and energy. We’ve got to get that back and that’s totally on us and within our control.”
Oregon faced double-digit deficits nearly the entire game after hot streaks by the Bruins to start the game and the second half. This time, UCLA held on strong.
The Bruins built a 17 point lead last Sunday against Stanford only to see that evaporate in the second half of the Cardinal’s 75-68 win.
Thursday, the Ducks fell behind by as many as 15 points in the first half, after the Bruins started the game shooting a startling 75 percent, and by 19 after a 12-2 run to start the second half.
The Bruins shot 56 percent in the first half and upped that to 58 percent in the second compared to 36 percent and 37.5 percent marks for the Ducks.
“The big difference in the game was the start of the game and the start of the half they were the more aggressive basketball team,” Kent said.
With the inside game virtually shut down, the Ducks relied on their outside shooting, an area they lead the conference in.
Oregon finished 8 of 20 from beyond the arc but 2 of 10 in the second half. Four of those three-pointers came from senior point guard Aaron Brooks.
The three-point shot keyed each of Oregon’s runs. The Ducks went on a modest 12-6 run, three trifectas from Brooks and one from Tajuan Porter, to cut the deficit to 35-26 at the half.
Oregon again got within nine with 4:05 to play in the game after Bryce Taylor’s put-back, a Brooks drive, and Malik Hairston’s three-point play made it 60-51, but the Bruins responded with an 8-2 run to put the game out of reach.
Brooks, the Pac-10’s leading scorer at 19.1 points per game, was held below his average with 14 points and was a focus by the Bruins coming in after he buried the game-winner and had 25 points in the teams’ previous meeting.
Thursday Brooks made just one field goal from inside the arc against the collapsing UCLA defense, which recorded eight blocked shots and seven steals.
“He played 40 minutes,” Kent said of Brooks. “We couldn’t afford to take him off the floor and he did play extremely hard in the game and I’m proud of him for hanging in there with us.”
The Bruins received some balance scoring from its starters – 17 from the usually solid Arron Afflalo, 12 from Darren Collison and 11 from Josh Shipp – but the biggest difference Thursday came in the form of sophomore forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute.
Mbah a Moute got into foul trouble and scored just six points against the Ducks the first time around but recorded a double-double with 15 points and 12 rebounds Thursday including a key rebound and basket with 3:35 remaining in the game that ended an Oregon run when the Ducks had cut the Bruins’ lead to nine.
Bryce Taylor led all Oregon scorers with 17 points on 6-of-13 shooting. Aside from Brooks and Taylor, Oregon’s three other starters finished 8 of 24 shooting for the game, and the Ducks’ bench was virtually nonexistent, scoring just four points to go along with five rebounds and three turnovers.
It’s not the ideal start to the second half of the season for the Ducks, but now the focus turns to defending second place in the conference. Oregon is currently knotted in that spot with Washington State and USC, the Ducks opponent Saturday. Both won on Thursday.
USC handed Oregon its first loss of the season back on Jan. 4, 84-82.
“We need to regroup and get focused on SC because you’ve got an opportunity now to be in second place or you can drop down to sixth place in hurry as tough as this conference is,” Kent said. “If we can get the split (Saturday), get home, the schedule turns in our favor with five of seven games at Mac Court coming down the stretch.”
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