CATHERINE JAYIN JUN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Senior guard
Billy Knight tries to muscle up a shot over
Villanova’s Gary Buchanan. The Bruins went on to
lose 58-57. Villanova 58 UCLA 57
By Greg Schain
Daily Bruin Reporter
VILLANOVA, Pa. “”mdash; What goes around comes around.
Sort of.
Just three days after Billy Knight helped lift No. 15 ranked
UCLA over USC on a last-second three-pointer, the Bruins blew a
four-point lead with just over a minute left in the game to suffer
a crushing road defeat at the hands of Villanova, 58-57, in front
of a sold-out crowd of 6,500 at The Pavilion.
“It’s heartbreaking,” UCLA senior forward Matt
Barnes said. “Now we know how USC felt.”
The Bruin demise started with 1:18 left, when Villanova guard
Gary Buchanan connected on his sixth three-pointer of the game,
cutting the Bruin lead to 57-56. After a Barnes turnover, center
Brooks Sales drove the lane and was fouled by senior Dan
Gadzuric.
Sales hit two free throws to give the Wildcats a one-point lead
that they would not relinquish.
“They pressed me real hard,” Sales said. “I
started dribbling and a lane opened up, so I drove and got
fouled.”
Knight had enough time to get two three-point attempts off
before the buzzer, but both were off the mark.
“I thought the first shot might go,” Knight said.
“But it hit the rim twice and bounced out.”
After the misses, students of the Big- East mainstay rushed the
court as if they had just won the National Championship.
Knight finished with 17 points, tied with Barnes for the UCLA
scoring highs. They were the only Bruins to score in
double-figures.
“We played well and shot well,” Barnes said.
“But they rebounded better and that hurt us.”
The Bruins (16-7) actually outrebounded the Wildcats, 30-25
overall, but Villanova (14-8) came up with the rebounds at crucial
points in the game.
In particular, on Knight’s last shot, the Villanova
defense stifled Gadzuric from getting the tip-in off the miss.
“If we had gotten one more rebound in the last two
minutes, we might have come out with a victory,” UCLA head
coach Steve Lavin said.
The last two minutes became a factor only because UCLA
wasn’t able to open up a big lead early.
“We came out lackluster,” Barnes said.
UCLA played the first half fairly even with Villanova. The
Bruins were down 31-30 at the break. But in the second half, the
Wildcats quickly opened up an eight-point lead.
However, down 47-39 with 8:40 left, UCLA went to a man defense
and quickly quelled the Villanova offensive attack. For the next
seven and a half minutes, the Bruins surrendered only six points,
allowing themselves to go from eight down to four up.
Junior Jason Kapono scored six of his nine points in the second
half, aiding the comeback.
The Bruins came out of Villanova with a loss, but were lucky
that they did not lose players to injury.
With 10:22 left in the game, senior Rico Hines was elbowed in
the jaw while going for a steal in the backcourt, and he went down
in pain.
After laying on the floor bleeding from a cut lip for a couple
of minutes, Hines returned to the bench, where he stayed the rest
of the game.
“I put my head in there and I just remember getting
hit,” Hines said. “I don’t know what happened
after that.”
Trainers say he didn’t suffer a concussion and will return
to practice Monday. Hines missed three games with a concussion last
month.
Freshman Cedric Bozeman also had a scare. With 3:22 left in the
game, he banged knees with Buchanan and went down writhing in pain.
After going into the locker room, he returned to the bench but
didn’t see any more action. The knee he banged was the same
knee Bozeman had a torn meniscus in earlier in the season, which
sidelined him for a month.
“We banged knees pretty hard,” Bozeman said.
“My knee was kind of sore at the beginning too, and it was a
little stiff when I woke up.”
Bozeman added that he could have come back in at the end of the
game if called upon and, like Hines, will practice as normal this
week.
The Bruins seemed upset after the game. However, they remain in
a four-way tie for third place in the Pac-10.
“We’re lucky this wasn’t a Pac-10 game,”
Barnes said.