UCLA men’s basketball stumbles against Oregon State, 71-67
Sophomore guard/forward Kyle Anderson bounced back from his underwhelming performance against Oregon, but his team couldn’t maintain its energy in a loss to Oregon State.
By Andrew Erickson
Feb. 2, 2014 4:32 p.m.
CORVALLIS, Ore.—With an 11:30 a.m. local tip, it appeared many Oregon State faithful failed to set an alarm.
Whether from yet-to-be-purchased Super Bowl hors d’oeuvres or a late Saturday night on the town, UCLA closed its Oregon road trip in front of a sleepy Gill Coliseum. Somewhere, a marketing intern should have advertised “good seats still available.”
The 2013-2014 Bruins surely have played in tougher environments this season. Something about Gill Coliseum doesn’t have the same ring as Madison Square Garden. All UCLA seemingly had to do was stop all-everything Oregon State guard and Pac-12 leading scorer Roberto Nelson.
To that end, UCLA engaged its target and latched on admirably. Nelson was stifled, stymied and stopped all afternoon, scoring just 12 points. He only got off eight shots, his lowest total since Dec. 18.
But one player scoring doesn’t make a team. Neither does defending just one. In a 71-67 Oregon State victory, the problems arose not from the play of Nelson, but from down low.
Down under to be exact.
Sydney native Angus Brandt gave UCLA fits all day long. He, along with senior forward Eric Moreland, drew fouls, distributed to OSU’s guards and scored the Bruins right off the floor. Brandt tallied 13 points and five rebounds, while Moreland annihilated UCLA on the glass, adding 14 rebounds to his 11 points.
Building an 11-point lead with a little more than six minutes left in the first half, the Bruins then looked disinterested over the next 20, as Beavers freshman guard Hallice Cook dropped 14 second-half points.
“I think they just played harder than we did,” said redshirt senior forward Travis Wear. “That’s unacceptable. We should know that we’re going to get every team’s best game being UCLA. We can’t let that happen.”
It happened in the paint, where the Beavers scored 28 points and it happened beyond the arc, where UCLA made just 6-of-21 shots. Freshman guard Zach LaVine and sophomore guard Jordan Adams combined to go just 1-of-16 from the field and were shut out in 10 tries from deep.
A pair of free throws from redshirt senior forward David Wear cut Oregon State’s advantage to just one with 55 seconds to play, but the Bruins admitted all game long, they were flatter than a gridiron.
“I didn’t like our effort, I didn’t like our enthusiasm,” said coach Steve Alford. “That falls on me. It falls on me and we’ve got to do a better job. That’s a hard one to figure out. This one was a big one. This one was a big one for them and it was a big one for us.”
Sunday’s stinker marks the Bruins’ second straight dud to close out a road trip. The question for UCLA (17-5, 6-3 Pac-12) no longer pertains to whether it can hang with the good, but whether it can consistently contend with the average, namely OSU (13-8, 5-4) and Utah.
After a gritty Thursday night win at Oregon, Alford talked about how proud he was of his team’s improvement.
“For us, it’s just our growth,” he said.
On Sunday, that melodic tune disintegrated into cacophony, specifically a 10-minute tirade from Alford to his team that could be heard in Gill Coliseum’s media room and all throughout the lower concourse. Thursday’s “effort plays” and “growth” were discarded somewhere along I-5 for his Sunday word choices of “immature,” “didn’t care one iota” and that his team was “satisfied.”
UCLA has until Saturday’s road game at 10-12 USC to figure out what went wrong, to rebuild the flattened.
Until then, UCLA falls to a tie with the California Golden Bears for the conference’s No. 2 spot, with its worst loss of the season now to consider.
“I guess we just have to come out and play harder,” said sophomore guard/forward Kyle Anderson. “I’m not sure (why we lost). We just didn’t come out and play how we played the last few games.”
