Down but not out, m.hoops secures victory

Down but not out, m.hoops secures victory

Despite side-lined players, UCLA overcomes Cougars

By Scott Yamaguchi

and Ross Bersot

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

With J.R. Henderson side-lined due to strep throat for the
second consecutive game, the loss of Kris Johnson to an injury with
14:52 to play in the first half of Saturday’s final regular-season
contest against Washington State could have proved disastrous for
the UCLA men’s basketball team.

Johnson’s injury, a strained lower back, left Jelani McCoy and
Charles O’Bannon as the Bruins’ only inside force, and the Cougars’
exploitation of this weakness was made blatantly obvious by the
33-23 rebounding advantage they held at game’s end.

But thanks to a magnificent effort from senior Kevin Dempsey,
who made his final start on Senior Day in Pauley Pavilion and
played a career-high 34 minutes, UCLA had a higher total in the
statistic that matters most – points.

The 82-71 win, in front of 11,966, gave the Bruins – who opened
the season with an inauspicious 1-2 showing in the Maui
Invitational – their fourth consecutive victory, and a full head of
steam heading into the first round of the NCAA Tournament, which
starts Thursday.

"We’re 21-5 since Hawaii and 21-4 since Dec. 2," UCLA head coach
Jim Harrick said. "This win today gives us momentum and confidence
in our ability."

It also confirmed, once again, the Bruins’ ability to win with a
depleted lineup. Thursday, they eked out a 91-88 win over
Washington without Henderson, who leads the team in scoring and
rebounding. Against the Cougars, they did it without Henderson and
Johnson, who boasts the team’s highest scoring average and second
highest field goal shooting percentage in Pacific 10
competition.

And Washington State wasn’t a particularly weak opponent. When
the two teams met in Pullman Jan. 4, the Cougars, playing without
their best player, forced UCLA into overtime before succumbing,
78-73.

Saturday, that best player, forward Mark Hendrickson, fully
recovered from the broken hand that forced him out of the first
contest, turned in an outstanding 22-point, 12-rebound
performance.

But Charles O’Bannon stepped up for UCLA with 24 points and
three steals, Jelani McCoy had 20 points and three blocked shots,
and Dempsey turned in his finest performance in a Bruin uniform
with six points and a career-high nine assists, all pushing UCLA
over the hump.

Dempsey’s output was especially encouraging, as Henderson and
Johnson are both questionable as the tournament approaches.

"To watch Kevin Dempsey evolve from a boy to a man has been the
kind of thing you do in college," Harrick said. "He could have gone
a lot of ways, and he’s had a lot of adversity. But he knows our
system as well as any guy I’ve ever coached, and he plays the
offense like it is supposed to be played."

That was apparent from the game’s opening sequence, when Dempsey
hit Johnson with an entry pass on the low post that led to the
first of his assists. It was also obvious 12 minutes into the half,
when he drove in from the left side and laid the ball in, pushing
UCLA’s tenuous lead back to six points.

From there, though, things seemed to fall apart for the Bruins,
and Washington State went on an 11-2 run that left it ahead, 33-30,
with 3:07 left in the half. The lead reached six points when Cougar
guard Chris Scott scored an easy lay-in with 16 seconds to go, and
it appeared that UCLA would enter the locker room with a
three-point deficit after O’Bannon knocked down one of his two
three-pointers with two seconds left.

But Donminic Ellison took the ensuing inbound pass for
Washington State and heaved a 48-footer that banked in at the
buzzer, giving the Cougars a 44-38 halftime advantage.

Still, Harrick was positive after the game, insisting that his
team’s halftime deficit was not another one of the mental lapses
that almost cost it victories at Oregon State and against
Washington Thursday.

"I didn’t think we had any lapses," Harrick said. "I thought
there was a momentum change at 28-24 when Charles missed a dunk.
Against Washington, we just quit playing. Tonight, we didn’t quit
playing, we just had a momentum change."

The biggest problem, according to Harrick, was that the Bruins
hadn’t looked enough to McCoy, who had just six points and one
rebound at halftime.

"At the half, I felt we needed a spark," he said. "I thought we
needed to go into McCoy, and that seemed to confuse (WSU)."

It wasn’t so much that McCoy confused them, but more that the
Cougars, whose tallest player was the 6-foot-9-inch Hendrickson,
had no answer for UCLA’s 6-foot-10 center.

McCoy opened the half with a pair of slam dunks, and Dempsey
tied the score at 44 with a fall-away jumper two minutes into the
half. The two teams traded baskets for the next five minutes, until
another McCoy slam dunk, on an assist from Dempsey, put the Bruins
ahead for good at 57-56.

When all was said and done, McCoy had 14 second-half points, 10
of which came on thunderous dunks.

"They just really dominated today," Cougar head coach Kevin
Eastman said. "We had tough match-up problems, and they played
smart off those problems. We couldn’t stop Jelani McCoy."

SUSIE CHU/Daily Bruin

Starting for the last time Saturday in Pauley, Kevin Dempsey
turned in six points and nine assists in 34 minutes.

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