LOS ANGELES
About the time 12,026 people at Pauley Pavilion started thinking about beating the traffic and hitting the 405, the video screen programmer chose to punch up a shot of Lute Olson.
Why not? This one was over. UCLA led 83-75 Thursday night, and Arizona had barely stirred for the game’s first 38 minutes. Give the Arizona legend his due.
For the first time all night, a small section of upper-deck Arizona fans in sections 212 and 213 spoke up. “Luuuuute!” they chanted. “Luuuuute!”
What else did they have to cheer about?
And then suddenly it was tied, 84-all, and Arizona’s Ryan Anderson had a free throw to give the Wildcats their first lead since what seemed like the Ice Age.
Perhaps you dozed off. At Pauley Pavilion, 12,026 awoke.
“I felt like, ‘Oh great, we’re gonna let this slip away,” said UCLA coach Steve Alford. “We got a little lackadaisical.”
With six seconds remaining, UCLA wingman Bryce Alford got a pass in his favorite spot, 20 feet from the bucket. Game tied. No timeouts left.
“The key was to get a (defensive) switch and have (UA center Kaleb) Tarczewski on me,” Alford said. “I love being in that situation. Even in my driveway, I would have my mom count down from five seconds, and I would shoot it until I made it.”
A week ago, Alford shot 5 for 21 at Washington and 2 for 10 at Washington State. The Bruins were swept on the Pac-12’s opening weekend. He was not a deadeye. He was dreadful.
But on Thursday, with the 7-foot Zeus raising his arms to distract Alford, you could almost hear the snap of the net before his three-pointer beat the Wildcats 87-84.
“You know he’s going to take that shot,” said UCLA senior center Tony Parker. “Once you see the little stutter step and the bob of his head, you know it’s going up.”
With a bob of his head, Alford beat the Wildcats on a night that, frankly, Arizona didn’t play well enough to win.
This was the “good” UCLA, the one that whacked Kentucky a month ago. When the Bruins play the way they played Thursday, with Parker getting a 14-12 double-double, and with guards Aaron Holiday, Isaac Hamilton and Alford combining for 10 three-pointers and 18 assists, UCLA can beat anybody on the planet.
If this was the “good” UCLA, it was the “bad” Arizona. The Bruins shot 51.6 percent. It seemed like 81.6 percent. UA’s dysfunction was apparent to the final six seconds when Tarczewski was left one on one against Alford 20 feet from the rim.
That’s the biggest mismatch since Ross Perot ran for president.
Yet somehow Arizona almost pulled this one off the same way it did at Gonzaga. Maybe the takeaway from Thursday’s game is that, no matter its defensive flaws, the Wildcats don’t pack up and go home easily.
It was apparent early that UCLA was desperate. With a 5-0 lead, Alford slapped the floor with the palms of his hands, as if to say “bring it on.”
As the Bruins were leaving Pullman, Washington, last week, coach Alford sent player Alford a text.
“I told him, ‘I know you’re a tough kid,” his father said Thursday night. “I think this team may feed off his toughness.”
Bryce Alford hasn’t been an Arizona killer by any stretch. He was 3 for 12 in the Bruins’ Pac-12 tournament loss to the Wildcats a year ago, and 13 for 34 in his career against Arizona. That’s 38 percent.
But now that he’s a junior, this is no longer the coach’s kid from Albuquerque who got a gift spot on a Pac-12 roster when his father left New Mexico to coach UCLA. Now he’s legit; if he’s not the most feared distance shooter in the league, who is?
If Arizona had Alford, it might go 16-2 in the league. Maybe better.
The Bruins savored Thursday’s victory and then some. The school honored NBA All-Star Russell Westbrook at halftime; he donated a significant sum to the $35 million Ostin Practice Facility, scheduled to open in 2017. When Alford, Parker and Holiday showed up at the media center for postgame interviews, all wore oversized black-framed glasses, a tribute to the stylish Westbrook.
Even Alford (the coach) couldn’t suppress a laugh. It’s not often an opponent can laugh at a Sean Miller team.
“It was the energy we didn’t have in Pullman,” he said.
Sometimes Olson’s legacy gets in the way of reality, but winning at Pauley Pavilion has always been an uphill climb for Arizona. From 1990-2002, Olson lost at Pauley with nine Top 25 teams. That’s astonishing.
This is the 30th anniversary of Arizona’s first-ever Pac-12 championship. It clinched that title in 1986 on the same floor, Pauley Pavilion, on a night that former Bruins star Reggie Miller had guaranteed a victory.
Olson and his late wife Bobbi celebrated that night by walking south of campus to Alice’s Restaurant at 1043 Westwood Avenue. That structure is now an Italian place, Tanino’s. Thursday night the UA went home hungry.
Times change, and basketball teams change, but that ’86 game remains deeply appreciated; even Arizona’s 1994 Final Four team and Miller’s 2011 Elite Eight Pac-12 champions couldn’t win at Pauley.
Thursday’s setback was neither an upset nor unexpected.
“This was a game we had to have,” Steve Alford said.
By the time UCLA plays at McKale Center on Feb. 12, Alford’s words are likely to echo through Arizona’s locker room. Next time, it will be a game Arizona has to have.
