UCLA Basketball: Arizona Game Thread

The No. 4 seed UCLA Bruins (20-12, 11-7) meet the No. 1 seed Arizona Wildcats (29-3, 16-2) in the semifinals of the PAC-12 Tournament at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Tip-off is set for 6:10 PM PT. You can catch the game on PAC-12 Networks (or PAC-12.com -- both free). Ted Robinson and Bill Walton will call it. You can also listen on Tunein Radio or 570 AM. Follow along with PAC-12 live stats.

We've got multiple BN previews to set the game up for you: the Arizona offense, the stats and the Q&A. PAC-12 has their official preview.

Vegas has Arizona as the 11 point favorite. Ouch. It was 12 last time at McKale.

At this writing, we still don't know if Kevon Looney is playing. He was accidentally elbowed in the face, and left the game for a ct-scan.

UCLA blew out justSC yesterday 96-70 on the strength of Isaac Hamilton's 36 points. He also held an tired Elijah Stewart to 12 points. Arizona beat Berkeley 73-51. In their last match-up at the McKale center in Tuscon, Arizona beat UCLA 57-47. It was a game of runs highlighted by good defense on both sides. For Bruin fans, the main takeaway was that Tony Parker, Kevon Looney and Thomas Welsh all fouled out, and Tony Parker, in particular, was in a desert road trip funk. The refs have to let them play.

This is a daunting task for the Bruins whether Looney plays or not. If Kevon Looney plays (at full strength), then the winning road map for the Bruins is to keep the interior bottled up and let Arizona shoot jumpers (and pray they are missing tonight) on defense, and have Parker and Looney be very active underneath while NP4, Bryce Alford and Isaac Hamilton hit 3's on offense.

Enjoy the game thread with your fellow BNers and Bruins.