UCLA WBBall Defeats Washington 73-55

Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

UCLA came into Pauley having finished a tough 3 game stretch, and the biggest challenge would be to keep the emotional and mental intensity at the level its been during the games against Stanford, Cal, and USC.  Against a Washington team that is near the bottom of the pac-10 standings but still defensively sound, UCLA couldn't afford to waste all the momentum they've been building the last few weeks.

UCLA came out sloppy in the first half.  I woudln't say that the team was uninterested or not playing hard, as their defensive intensity was still there, but on offense the teams suffered many mental lapses and turned the ball over again and again.  When UCLA wasn't turning the ball over, they shot 50% for the half.  However, UCLA could never gain a lead bigger than 4 points and there were 8 ties and 6 lead changes in the first half.  The main reason for this is Washington seemed to have no problems at all with UCLA's full court pressure and trapping defense, and constantly found seems in the defense or UCLA would get a stop but then turn the ball over leading to an easy put back, and Washington shot almost 60% in the first half, to take a 32-31 lead into halftime.

 From WBB vs UW

UCLA came out in the second half, and their pressure, trapping defense was night and day better, constantly harassing Washington into turnovers or wasting half of the shot clock just to get the ball across half court.  UCLA opened up the second half on a 26-5 run, and by the 9 minute mark was up 57-37.  By this point the game was over, but after 10 amazing minutes of basketball from the Bruins, the refs decided to take over the game and make the last 10 minutes almost unwatchable by calling fouls on EVERY. SINGLE. POSSESSION, dragging out the game way longer than it needed to be. The two teams combined for 30 fouls and 42 freethrows in the second half, which was pretty agonizing to sit through.  There was a pretty scary moment late in the game when Erica Tukiainen went down with what appeared to be a leg or knee injury, but she got up and walked off and seemed fine, so that is very relieving.  In the second half, Washington's shooting fell to 24% while UCLA shot 58%.  Below are pictures from the game courtesy of B D.

Looking at the box score, UCLA outshot Washington 54% to 42%, and outrebounded them 35-37.  In a very sloppy game, UCLA had 25 turnovers to 26 for Washington.  UCLA shot a not so great 56% from the freethrow line, while Washington shot 57%, for a relatively sloppy game all around.  It is easy to think that UCLA was not nearly as focused tonight as they were in the win over USC, but 10 intense minutes to start the second half was enough to completely blow the game wide open.

Two Bruins scored in double digits, and there are no surprises here.  Markel Walker had 19 points on 6-7 shooting while Jasmine Dixon scored 17 on 7-10 shooting.  UCLA got good bench scoring from Rebekah Gardner (9) and Nina Earl (8), and really the only player who had a total off night was Darxia Morris, finishing with 0 points on 0-1 shooting, though she didn't need to score as Markel and Jasmine had the hot hand tonight.

UCLA improves their record tonight to 17-7 (10-3).  UCLA will take on Washington State Saturday at Pauley at 4pm in a pink zone game to raise money and awareness to combat breast cancer.  Washington State tonight went into the Galen Center and upset the Trojans, which means that WSU is no longer in last place, and USC is now on a 5 game losing streak and clearly the wheels are coming off.  In other news, I was speaking with someone associated with the team tonight before the game, and for UCLA to feel good about their tournament chances, in addition to maintaining 2nd place in conference, just a single "bad" loss could put UCLA on the bubble since the pac-10 RPI is so weak and our best win is against a top 30 RPI USC that is clearly struggling, so a loss to a WSU, OSU, or Arizona would be crippling.  Hopefully, UCLA will continue to take care of business with 5 games left in the regular season.