KEITH ENRIQUEZ/Daily Bruin Senior Staff UCLA center
Dan Gadzuric goes for a shot over Duke sophomore
Jason Williams. The Bruins lost to Duke 76-63 in
the Sweet 16. Sweet Sixteen Duke 76 UCLA 63
By Chris Umpierre
Daily Bruin Staff
PHILADELPHIA “”mdash; In the team’s locker room 30 minutes
after UCLA’s 76-63 loss to Duke, a somber Matt Barnes sat
slumped with his beanie pulled down just above his eyes. His arms
were stretched out, grabbing the bench he sat on.
Watching him speak to reporters, you could tell he knew.
He knew that his No. 4-seeded Bruins (23-9) had a golden
opportunity to beat top-ranked and No. 1-seeded Duke (32-4)
Thursday night in the NCAA tournament’s Sweet Sixteen at the
First Union Center. He knew that if only his team had executed
better it would be he and his teammates talking about playing USC
in the Elite Eight instead of getting ready to board a plane for
Los Angeles.
“It wouldn’t have taken a superhuman effort for us
to beat them,” Barnes said. “If we would have just
played our game we would have been fine tonight.
“Duke is definitely beatable,” he added. “They
executed a lot better than we did tonight and that’s why they
got the victory but we could have beat them tonight.
Definitely.”
After UCLA cut the Blue Devils’ lead to three points
(40-37) with 14 minutes to go, Duke took control of the game with a
10-1 run and never looked back. Super sophomore point guard Jason
Williams spearheaded the run, leading all scorers with a
career-high 34 points.
Bruin players like point guard Earl Watson shared Barnes’
frustrations that the Bruins weren’t able to take advantage
of a night when the Blue Devils weren’t themselves.
“Knowing that you should have won and could have won makes
(the loss) very hard to accept,” Watson said. “We
didn’t play good at all. The way we played they should have
beat us by 40 points. It was a nasty game for us.”
If there ever was a night UCLA ““ a 12-and-a-half-point
underdog ““ could upset the almighty Blue Devils, the night of
March 22 night was it.
Duke, typically a team that knocks down the three-point shot
with impressive precision, wasn’t hitting its three-point
attempts. The Blue Devils started the game missing their first six
treys (which, incidentally, were hoisted in the first three
minutes).
The Blue Devils, who entered the game shooting 40 percent from
three- point land, ended up shooting an atrocious 4 of 19 (21
percent) from behind the three-point arc in the first half. All
told, Duke shot a horrendous 29 percent from the floor in the first
20 minutes.
What’s more, their best player was having an off night in
the first half. Williams was 2 of 8 from the field and had three
turnovers at halftime.
The game was there for the Bruins to take. They just had to step
up and grab it.
The problem was they didn’t. As bad as Duke was in the
first half, UCLA matched them. The Bruins shot 26 percent (8 of 31)
from the field and fell into stretches where they couldn’t
find the basket.
After UCLA scored in the opening moments of the game, the Bruins
missed on their next 13 possessions. It took a whole seven minutes
before a Bruin scored again, when Young hit a 15-foot jumper at the
13:01 mark.
By that time UCLA was down 12-4. While the Bruins improved their
shooting percentage to 54 percent in the second half, their
lackluster play in the first half did them in.
“Duke didn’t do anything special ““ it was
mostly ourselves,” said Watson, whose team committed 23
turnovers. “We beat ourselves tonight as far as not being
smart. We did a great job in terms of the physical aspect but the
mental aspect is where we beat ourselves.”
“We just didn’t make smart decisions,” he
added. “You have to make smart decisions when you get to this
level of the tournament. We didn’t play as smart as we should
have.”
Williams’ play in the second half didn’t help
matters. The point guard put his team on his back and carried them
to victory.
In an array of mystifying drives to the basket and spectacular
shooting from behind the arc in transition, Williams scored 19
straight Blue Devil points over a span of six minutes in the second
half.
Duke Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski credits his team’s defense
for Williams’ outburst.
“Our defensive boards and some loose balls led to some
runs where Jason could score,” he said. “He’s a
great player, no question. He carried us during that stretch
offensively, but our defense was what let him.”
The fact that two star Bruin players got into early foul trouble
also played a role in the defeat. Forward Jason Kapono picked up
his fourth foul with 24 seconds to go in the first half, while
Watson got whistled for his fourth foul at the 11:05 mark of the
second half.
As a result both players said they played a lot less
aggressively in the second half. The prospect of fouling out meant
that going for steals and playing assertive defense were out of the
question.
“We couldn’t afford to lose them (by fouling out) so
we had to lay back a little bit on our (full court) press and that
hurt us,” Barnes said.
UCLA was also hurt because it didn’t jump on Duke when the
Blue Devils were staggering in the first half. Instead of going for
the big roundhouse in the first 20 minutes, the Bruins only threw
jabs.
“We just didn’t give Duke our best punch and
that’s what most of us are so upset about,” shooting
guard Ray Young said.