UCLA’s frontcourt falls short to Pac-12’s big men

Steve Alford wasn’t happy, and everyone in Pauley Pavilion knew it.

As the ball ricocheted off the rim, sophomore forward/center Tony Parker and Oregon State forward Eric Moreland both reached for it. Moreland came down with the board, and Parker came down on top of him, prompting a whistle from the referees and a shout of “Rebound!” from the UCLA men’s basketball coach, his words reverberating around the arena.

The battle on the boards was a problem for UCLA throughout Sunday night’s 74-69 win over Oregon State, underscoring the larger issue of the Bruins’ trouble dealing with size.

The Beavers boast one of the Pac-12’s tallest teams, with a starting frontcourt of two 6-foot-10 players in Moreland and center Angus Brandt and 6-foot-8 forward Devon Collier, getting heavy minutes off the bench.

While redshirt senior forwards Travis and David Wear equal that size, both standing at 6-foot-10 themselves, dealing with the Beaver’s strong post presence gave the Bruins some trouble.

“I think this is one team – they’re probably just as big as us if not bigger (than us),” David Wear said. “They’re just a really good offensive rebounding team, which we knew coming into the game and they’re just long and athletic and they really crash the offensive glass really hard.”

UCLA entered the locker room at halftime with a six-rebound deficit, but did manage to limit Oregon State to just three offensive rebounds, which UCLA matched itself. The Bruins were being beat inside, and it wasn’t just on the glass. Oregon State scored 18 of its 38 first-half points in the paint, eclipsing UCLA’s mark by eight.

“They’re big and they’re physical, and I think they really tried to pound it inside too, and not a lot of teams in our league consistently try to throw it in the post as much as they do, so you constantly are working for position,” Travis Wear said. “That gets tiring sometimes, especially if you take a minute off.”

But instead of looking more tired as the game wore on, the Bruins appeared to wake up, not letting the Beavers continue to exploit them inside. UCLA kept the rebound differential from growing and trimmed it down to five by the game’s end, reversing a nine-point deficit in the process.

UCLA got the win, but dealing with long teams such as Oregon State has been problematic for it all year. The Bruins have been out-rebounded in all but one of their seven losses, struggling to contain the size of teams such as Arizona, Duke, Stanford and Oregon State.

Alford realizes his team doesn’t have the most dominating frontcourt presence, with the Wears’ tendencies to drift to the perimeter, Parker’s struggles to stay out of foul trouble and the lack of depth behind those three. And while this could pose a problem heading into postseason play and with more lanky teams looming, Alford isn’t too concerned with fixing it.

“We’re not blessed with an abundance of big size up front. We’re not to that point yet. I think we get closer next year, but we are who we are at the end of the year,” Alford said. “We can’t change at this point, I told the team that. … We just gotta keep getting better at that and I thought we got better in the second half.”