INGLEWOOD — About time that UCLA did some of the heartbreaking.
It wasn’t the Big Dance, but it was a big stage. And maybe a big clue, too.
And this time, it was Bruins – past and present – who were boogying after Ryan Nembhard’s halfcourt heave to tie the game drifted left as time expired Saturday, giving the No. 22 UCLA men’s basketball team a 65-62 upset victory over No. 14 Gonzaga.
After scoring a team-high 18 points, there was a masked Eric Daily Jr. gesturing at center court at Intuit Dome – technically not the Bruins’ turf but close enough. Head Coach Mick Cronin holding up four fingers for a national TV audience. And Clippers guard Norman Powell, the former Bruin who showed up to the office Saturday and sat courtside, shimmying for the in-arena camera – in this breakout season, the veteran is determined to show us he can do it all, dance and score.
Things the Bruins are working on themselves. Scoring and, down the line, dancing.
Because we know what they’re here for: “We want to try to win the tournament,” said Cronin, the Bruins’ sixth-year coach. “That’s life at UCLA. That’s why I came to UCLA.”
And we know his teams can always defend. That they’ll fight and scrap, turn you over and chew you up. “They just basically take the ball from guards,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said.
But we didn’t know if this squad, which last week coughed up a 16-point lead and lost to North Carolina 76-74 at Madison Square Garden, could beat their higher-ranked rivals.
We didn’t know if they’d be able to keep up with the nation’s top-scoring team (89.2 points per game). Or if they’d be able to shake off recent history against the team that had beaten the Bruins four consecutive times, including twice by ripping out their hearts in the NCAA Tournament thrillers won on half-court heaves.
Cronin made it clear he believed “previous years had nothing to do with this game.” But might this game have something to do with future contests – maybe even against Gonzaga?
We can’t know yet, but it sure could. And wouldn’t that be fun?
We also don’t really know about UCLA’s offense. Except that it’s structured and, at times, suffocating. That the Bruins (11-2) run careful sets that are anything but carefree, that they’re heavy on perimeter passes and short on shot creation. It’s an offense that seems not just to stifle not just creativity but sometimes confidence, too. They shot 12 of 24 from 3-point range Saturday but just 36.4% (20 for 55) from the field overall.
Which is often fine, because the whole point is to score more points than the other team, and if the other team’s offense is in the mud, then, hey, you’re in business.
But sometimes you’re up against Gonzaga (9-4) and so you know you’ll have to “be able to get to 65 or 70 to win,” as Cronin said he’d anticipated before his team took the court in the first college game at the new, $2 billion NBA arena.
And sometimes you need to believe you can get buckets when the walls are closing in.
Sometimes you need faith that shots – like Sebastian Mack’s to tie the game 60-60 with 33 seconds left Saturday – will fall when the clock is approaching midnight.
And that free throws – the Bruins were shooting just 68.5% from the stripe this season but hit all five of their foul shots in those icy, final 33 seconds – will fall when big games depend on it.
Sometimes you’ve got to bet that letting fly – Dailey knocked down four of his five 3-point attempts Saturday when Kobe Johnson drained four of his season-high six 3-point tries – will give you the lift you need.
And that that doesn’t have to hurt you on the offensive glass: The Bruins came in averaging fewer than 12 offensive rebounds per game, but they outdid the Bulldogs in that department, 12-8.
It wasn’t win or go home Saturday. It wasn’t a matter of tournament survival. And it didn’t make up for any past pain or suffering, not really. But it was a good test, one that the Bruins aced.
Other than an ill-timed foul that put Ryan Nembhard on the line for an and-1 opportunity that could have tied the game with eight seconds left, “we played really smart down the stretch,” by Cronin’s meticulous calculations.
“Win or lose today … you gotta be mature enough to realize even if you win, you gotta get better,” he added. “So we’ve got to use all these things as a chance to get better.”
And now we – and they – have a better sense of not only what they need to keep working on, but of who they can be and what they’re capable of if they believe in themselves offensively.
So, please, committee members? C’mon, pencil in Gonzaga down the line, when it’s time to dance and time for some actual payback.