NICOLE MILLER/ Daily Bruin Senior guard Billy
Knight led the Bruins with seven rebounds in Saturday’s
loss to the Arizona State Sun Devils. Arizona State
69 UCLA 68
By Dylan Hernandez
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Cedric Bozeman jogged the ball up the court with three and a
half minutes remaining in a close game, and the Pauley Pavilion
crowd, even the usually gentle alumni section, came to its feet and
chanted in support of the UCLA men’s basketball team. It
seemed magical almost, like one of those slow-motion scenes from a
tear-jerking basketball movie about heroism, courage and
determination.
But this was no movie about heroism and there was definitely no
courage, no determination on display.
Just a lot of talent wasting away on the court because of an
overwhelming amount of laziness.
The Bruins, preseason favorites to win the Pacific 10 conference
and ranked 20th in the country, were neck and neck with an Arizona
State team that was so weak it had to play a near-invalid, reserve
forward Chris Osborne, who had a cast on his left hand.
Sounds bad?
Well, it gets worse.
The disabled man scored on them.
Want more?
The Bruins lost, 69-68.
It was UCLA’s first loss to the Sun Devils in Pauley
Pavilion since the 1986-87 season.
In its humiliating defeat at the hands of oh-so-sorry Arizona
State (14-10, 7-8 Pac-10) on Saturday, UCLA (17-8, 9-5) deserved
none of the support that it got from its fans.
Although the game took place over a three-day weekend, 9,823
aficionados went to Pauley and cheered their team, only to be
betrayed by the Bruins, who looked indifferent to what was going on
on the court in the first half.
Only after finding themselves down 36-31 at halftime did they
start playing. By then, however, it was too late ““ even
against ASU.
Don’t listen to what UCLA head coach Steve Lavin said
about giving the Sun Devils credit.
Arizona State is horrible.
Center Chad Prewitt, who paced ASU with 22 points and eight
rebounds, is a good player, but the Sun Devils have little besides
him. They are a team without size and quickness. They don’t
run the floor well. Their only redeeming trait is that they have
some resolve, which was significantly more than the Bruins had that
day.
UCLA’s players, though diplomatic enough to not mention
their opponent’s wide range of deficiencies, knew they
themselves were to blame for the loss.
“We just played too passive, too soft,” said junior
forward Jason Kapono, who scored 13 points. “They just came
out and pounced on us.”
Only two Bruins came to the court with any intent to play:
Bozeman and senior center Dan Gadzuric.
Bozeman looked every bit the blue-chip playmaker he was touted
to be. But his teammates were a step too slow ““ both
physically and mentally ““ to keep up with him. Bozeman
finished with 13 points and four assists.
Gadzuric, meanwhile, attacked with ill will on offense, making
good use of his 6-foot-11, 240-pound frame. He bumped and pounded
his way to a team-high 17 points, making eight of 15 shots.
The rest of the Bruins, admittedly, were still savoring the
team’s victory over Arizona two days before and forgot there
was a game to play.
“We get too high after a win,” said Kapono, the hero
of the Arizona contest. “We get proud of ourselves, get fat
heads, come out flat and get ourselves in a hole.”
“Sometimes we get too high after a win,” senior
guard Billy Knight added. “We don’t learn from our
lessons very well.”
Excelling against the strong, struggling against the weak:
it’s been UCLA’s biggest problem since the start of the
season, one the team has sworn to fix, but has never been able to
rid itself of.
“Man, it’s tough,” Bozeman said, shaking his
head. “I just don’t know what to say. It’s
starting to get real tough to take this. It’s just
depressing, man.”
The problem?
“We have to play with more heart, more passion,”
Kapono said.
For inspiration, the Bruins only had to look across the court to
Osborne, a junior college transfer in his first year at ASU.
Osborne broke his left wrist last season while at Compton College
(Calif.) and underwent two surgeries, but never fully
recovered.
He’s been in a cast for 13 months. He can barely move the
thumb on that hand.
If he were to play without the cast and if someone were to hit
it too hard, he said, his wrist would break again.
Still, Osborne logged four painful minutes in the first half and
hit a 16-foot jumper for his only points of the game, points that
made a difference in the final score.
Osborne, on this day, had what only a couple of the Bruins had
on Saturday.
He had passion, he had heart.