Pac-12 regular-season champ UCLA leaves no doubt in win over UA; Wildcats are onto Vegas

LOS ANGELES — Already with the Pac-12 regular-season title in hand, UCLA made a statement anyway on Saturday.

The Bruins spotted Arizona a 13-2 lead early on an emotional Senior Night, then came back to dominate most of the remaining evening at Pauley Pavilion, beating the Wildcats 82-73 to close out the Pac-12 season with a four-game lead over everyone else.

Arizona shot 47.4%, but the Wildcats were outrebounded 38-32 and coughed up 17 turnovers that led to 16 UCLA points.

“They were the more consistent, more physical team for 40 minutes,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said. “We battled in stretches but not quite enough, and we’re ready to put this one behind us and get onto postseason basketball.”

The Wildcats (25-6, 14-6 Pac-12) will open Pac-12 Tournament play at 7 p.m. MT Thursday in Las Vegas in a quarterfinal game against either seventh-seeded Utah or 10th-seeded Stanford. The Utes and Cardinal, who have both beaten Arizona this season, will meet in a first-round game at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

UCLA (27-4, 18-2), meanwhile, will open on Thursday at 1 p.m. as the No. 1 Pac-12 Tournament seed — and, if the Bruins continue unbeaten through next season, they might also become the No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament’s West Region.

“We did it, but at the same time we’re not done,” said UCLA forward Jaime Jaquez, who led the Bruins with 22 points and 10 rebounds.

Individually, Jaquez might have clinched the Pac-12 Player of the Year award on Saturday. While Arizona’s Azuolas Tubelis matched Jaquez with a double-double of his own, collecting 24 points and 10 rebounds, Jaquez led the Bruins to a decisive edge in the conference race.

Tubelis “has had a tremendous year for us but to the champion goes the spoils, so to speak,” Lloyd said.

While Tubelis led the Wildcats overall, freshman guard Kylan Boswell came through with 14 points while hitting 4 of 6 3-pointers, including two late when the Wildcats made a final push in a game the Bruins led by as many as 14 points.

“I just took advantage of the opportunities they gave me,” Boswell said. “Feel like I played a solid game but still just came up short.”

Holding a 40-37 halftime lead over the Wildcats, UCLA went on an 8-0 run right after the break and kept up a double-digit lead for most of the second half.

However, the Wildcats went on a 7-0 run to bring it back within double digits in the final four minutes. Boswell hit a 3-pointer from the left wing to cut UCLA’s lead to 68-61 with 3:42 left.

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But UCLA closed it out after David Singleton hit both ends of a one-and-one free-throw opportunity, and Jaquez made a pair of layups to make it 74-64 with 1:42 left, the second one coming after he stole the ball from Tubelis.

UCLA coach Mick Cronin took Jaquez, Tyger Campbell and Singleton out with 32 seconds left and the Bruins up by 11. Boswell hit a jumper to pull UA within nine with 24 seconds left, but neither team scored from there.

“We were hoping to just keep the game close and try to make a run at the end,” Lloyd said. “Unfortunately, we started off the second half not very well, and they got up almost double digits. From there we were just kind of hanging on.”

UCLA lost one of its key players, Jaylen Clark, to an undisclosed injury after he had 11 points and four steals in just 15 minutes.

The Wildcats showed their most life right after tipoff, when UCLA was still drenched in emotion from pregame Senior Night ceremonies that honored Jaquez, Singleton and Campbell.

Arizona built a 13-2 lead over the first six minutes — getting eight points from Tubelis, a 3-pointer from Kerr Kriisa and a 17-footer from Courtney Ramey during that span — while UCLA made just one of its first 13 shots from the field.

But the Bruins began finding their rhythm after Jaquez drove the baseline for a layup to make it 13-4 and, later, Singleton hit a pair of 3-pointers that helped UCLA cut it to 21-17 with 8:57 left in the half.

Singleton’s made 3s were was a bonus for a UCLA team that relies on defense and 2-point shooting much more than long-range shots. The Bruins shoot the second-lowest ratio of 3s to field-goal attempts in the Pac-12, just 30.2% of the time.

It was also a much different deal for Singleton than in UA’s 58-52 win over UCLA on Jan. 21 at McKale Center, when he was 0 for 5 from the field and missed all three 3s he tried.

“Our guys have got to do a good job recognizing he’s a great shooter,” Lloyd said. “At our place, we thought we did a good job on him and he didn’t get many shot attempts. But he’s a veteran player. He’s been in a lot of these games, and you’ve just got to be mindful.”

Even though the Wildcats outshot the Bruins 47.4% to 41.6%, Arizona did not help itself offensively with turnovers. The Wildcats had three turnovers and went 1 for 7 from the field over a four-minute stretch in the middle of the first half. They had seven turnovers overall before halftime that led to eight UCLA points. “They were settling for a lot of jump shots that didn’t go in, and we were able to get ourselves going a little bit offensively,” Lloyd said. “Then they tightened things up defensively.

“But you knew they were going to make a run to get back in the game. They’re a good team.”

The Bruins finished 17-0 at Pauley Pavilion.