Men’s basketball loses momentum with loss to Stanford
By Blair Angulo
Jan. 9, 2010 4:09 p.m.
PALO ALTO ““ Just when it seemed that the UCLA men’s basketball team had built some momentum, it reverted to its early-season ways on Saturday afternoon, dropping a 70-59 contest to Stanford at Maples Pavilion.
Coming off a thrilling 76-75 overtime victory at California on Wednesday night, UCLA showed its youth and inexperience by turning the ball over 23 times. That, combined with Cardinal sophomore guard Jeremy Green’s game-high 30 points, doomed the Bruins (7-9, 2-2 Pac-10) in a failed attempt to even their season record and earn a sweep of the Bay Area schools.
“As we look back on it, it was a winnable game,” Coach Ben Howland said. “We were right there.”
UCLA trailed by as little as six points with more than four minutes remaining, but only scored four points in the final 4:06.
Senior forward Landry Fields had 16 for a Stanford (8-7, 2-1 Pac-10) team that was coming off a narrow 54-53 defeat of USC on Wednesday night. Fields may be the Cardinal’s leader, but the afternoon clearly belonged to Green, who was 11-of-18 from the field.
Howland again went to the 2-3 zone defense for parts of Saturday’s game. The switch, along with 57 percent shooting in the first half, had allowed the Bruins to erase an early six-point deficit.
Yet Green almost single-handedly carried Stanford to a 34-33 lead at the half, sealing it with a desperate, off-balance 3-pointer from the right wing that banked in as time expired. He scored 17 before the break.
“We knew he was going to be hard to defend,” Howland said.
Green, who had only averaged 16.7 points per game, picked up where he left off in the second, making two of his game-high five 3-pointers to give the Cardinal a 46-40 lead and send most of the 6,946 fans in attendance into a frenzy.
UCLA pulled within one point after senior forward James Keefe hit a 3-pointer and then looked to take the lead, but sophomore guard Malcolm Lee committed one of his game-high seven turnovers in what was emblematic of the rough afternoon.
