Trojans once again slay Bruins in men’s basketball rematch
USC held senior forward/center Tony Parker and UCLA to 34.8 percent shooting in Thursday night’s 80-61 Trojan win at the Galen Center. (Aubrey Yeo/Daily Bruin senior staff)
By Matt Joye
Feb. 4, 2016 11:46 p.m.
The UCLA men’s basketball team has now played USC twice this year. Neither game has really been close.
The first time around – Jan. 13 – UCLA’s lackluster defense was the story. The Bruins allowed the Trojans to shoot 45 percent from 3-point range in an 89-75 USC rout.
“We just can’t figure out a way to guard,” said coach Steve Alford after that game. “That’s been our Achilles heel all year … we don’t guard.”
When the two teams rematched Thursday night, UCLA’s defense was just about as bad. The Trojans shot 40 percent from the 3-point line and put up 80 points. But that wasn’t the story.
The story was UCLA’s offense. The Bruins shot a paltry 34.8 percent from the field, setting a new low for the season.
“I thought we defended a little bit better in this game, we just didn’t make very many shots,” Alford said.
At this point, the bottom line is this: UCLA (13-10, 4-6 Pac-12) is just – overall – an inferior team to USC (18-5, 7-3).
The Trojans began the game on an explosive 9-0 run in front of a sold-out crowd. Within two minutes, UCLA was already on its heels.
“We just didn’t really get into a flow,” said freshman guard Aaron Holiday. “We came out slow, which hurt us, got down 9 and we just didn’t get into a flow at first.”
UCLA snuck back into the game for a brief moment, coming to within 3 points at the 14:38 mark in the first half. But that was as close as the Bruins would come all night, as the Trojans once again powered past them.
“Obviously (the Trojans are) playing well and they’re having a very good year,” Alford said. “This is a very good basketball team.”
The Trojans once again had their way from 3-point range and from the free-throw line, just as they did in their first matchup against the Bruins. USC made 10 of its 25 shot attempts from beyond the arc, and 12 of 13 at the foul line.
The UCLA offense paled by comparison. It wasn’t that the Bruins couldn’t get decent shots, it was just that they couldn’t convert. In what has become a recurring trend for the team this season, the low-post players missed a slew of point-blank attempts at the basket.
“We got a lot of great looks around the rim, me too, (and) I missed a ton of them,” said sophomore center Thomas Welsh. “I think it’s just focus and concentration.
Senior center Tony Parker also struggled in that regard, missing three key shots in the paint in the second half.
By then, though, the game was basically over. USC led by a comfortable double-digit lead for most of the second half, as UCLA struggled to make 3-pointers to get back in it. The Bruins cut it to a 6-point game with 4:07 to go, but the Trojans’ lead quickly ballooned back up to 14 points in just over a minute’s time.
“It’s hard. Guys are working hard. We feel for them,” Alford said. “We just have to make sure this year that we’re getting better. And I thought we showed some promise tonight, but when it really got tough I thought that’s when we really struggled.”
In many ways, the 80-61 loss Thursday was one of the lowest points in several seasons for the UCLA men’s basketball program.
With the loss, UCLA was swept by USC in the regular-season series. That hadn’t happened since 2010.
And before Thursday, USC had yet to notch back-to-back double-digit wins over UCLA in this century.
It was once said that Los Angeles was a UCLA basketball town and a USC football town. But for this year, at least, it’s all USC.
Contributing reports from Claire Fahy and Derrek Li, Bruin Sports senior staff.
