WBB gets crucial sweep over Washington schools

UCLA came into this weekend needing to sweep the two Washington schools to stay in 3rd place in the conference and remain in the conversation for a bid to the NCAA tournament.  Cal and Stanford have a very solid lock on the top 2 in the conference in this year at this point, and in the past the pac-10 has no recieved very many bids to the tournament.  With a very weak strength of schedule, it would be great if UCLA finished 3rd in conference, but anything lower than 4th and i think UCLA would be out of contention for a bid.

UCLA started the weekend with a 83-48 beatdown over washington st on thursday.  WSU remains winless against the bruins in Los Angeles.  This wasn't too surprising given that the washington schools this year are somewhere near the bottom of the conference standings.

Saturday was a different story.  UCLA jumped out to an early 11 point lead in the first half, but then 18 turnovers in the first half (yes, first half) led to multiple washington runs and stalled the UCLA offense, leading to just a 33-30 halftime lead.  Washington used 6 three pointers by Kingma to finally take a lead early in the second half, and had their largest lead, 56-53, with 8:24 to play.  At that point, Darxia Morris took over the game for UCLA and made UCLA's next 10  points and UCLA would reclaim the lead and finish with a 74-66 victory.

UCLA now stands at 14-4, 5-2 record.  UCLA is in a tie for 3rd place with ASU and USC.  UCLA now travels this week to the Bay area to face 2 top 10 teams.  If UCLA could steal either game up there it would be huge for UCLA's tournament profile, but UCLA is probably a considerable underdog in those games.