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PHOENIX – Trap UCLA. Press the Bruins. Get them in the dark and tell them ghost stories. Corner some of these guys in a hallway right about now and they'd drop their coffee cups.
Right about now, they'd jump if a car backfired.
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| Ben Howland says the Bruins were 'tentative instead of attacking' in the second half. (US Presswire) |
No. 1 seed? Please. If I'm Xavier coach Sean Miller, I've got a hand in their faces as they come off the bus Saturday. That's when UCLA plays the Musketeers in the West Region final for a chance to go to a third consecutive Final Four.
Whatever the plan was, Sean, scrap it. A Sun Belt team from Bowling Green, Ky., just cracked the code.
Halfway through a yawner of a West Region semifinal we found out these Bruins can't handle the pressure. Not the pressure of playing in the L.A. glare, not the pressure of winning a championship. The constant pressure on the basketball applied in UCLA's own backcourt.
The Bruins beat Western Kentucky 88-78 but their tongues were dragging when they left the court. Their 19 turnovers were a season high. Point guard Darren Collison, The Glue, fouled out for the first time this season.
You can talk about UCLA's 21-point halftime lead. The Bruins then got either disinterested or tired. Probably both. UCLA coach Ben Howland was running a glorified practice at the start of the second half. Control freak that he is, Howland called three momentum-killing timeouts in the first 7:22 of the second half. Howland does things like that. No one really knows why.
That left him with one timeout in the final 12:38, exactly the time Western Kentucky made its run. UCLA came out of the locker room and turned it over 12 times in the first 15 minutes. The Hilltoppers cut the lead to four twice. Western Kentucky's A.J. Slaughter had a good look at a 3-pointer that would have cut it to one, but it rimmed out.
"That, in a nutshell, was the game," Western Kentucky coach Darrin Horn said. "If it goes to one (point) everything is on our side. I thought that was the sequence of the second half. If that goes down, it's a totally different deal."
Luckily, UCLA had Kevin Love. UCLA always seems to have Kevin Love. The amazing freshman had a career-high 29, the second-most points scored by a Bruins freshman in the tournament. He also had four assists and four blocks.
But for a long stretch, the Bruins were outplayed, outhustled, even outcheered. The huge pro-UCLA U.S. Airways Center crowd was being embarrassed by the one section of Western Kentucky fans.
"I thought we were tentative instead of attacking," said Howland, who could have been speaking for his fans, too.
Now project to Saturday when Xavier shows up on a roll with better, more athletic players. The Musketeers were first in scoring defense in the Atlantic 10. If the Bruins lose focus -- and they did after scoring 36 of their first 51 points in the paint -- Xavier can capitalize.
Summary: Miller should docked his suit allowance if he doesn't clamp on the press. Make UCLA break it before taking it off.
It was easy for UCLA to let up on Friday. Western Kentucky missed 26-of-32 first-half shots. UCLA was up 41-20. The Hilltoppers' star guards, Tyrone Brazelton and Courtney Lee, looked like frauds.
But Howland knew these guys were going to trap and press and jump and run, didn't he? That's how they got to 29-6 before the game. Xavier is much better and just got a game tape that might as well be the Da Vinci Code to the Musketeers.
"I've had no chance to see Xavier." Howland said. "We've got our hands full."
Maybe more than you know, Ben.