Kapono’s shot right on target

By Dylan Hernandez
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

TUCSON, Ariz. “”mdash; For 20 minutes, Jason Kapono was magic,
his right hand an elegant wand that softly carried the ball into
the net whenever he flicked his wrist. It didn’t matter where
he stood on the court or who was in front of him; the shots kept
falling.

Kapono felt good. In the first half, he hit four of his six
three-point field goal attempts and scored 14 points to give his
team a 58-43 lead going into the break Saturday against Arizona at
the McKale Center.

In the locker room during halftime, Kapono didn’t feel
himself cooling off. He still felt good. Only a deep bruise in his
left thigh, sustained two days before in his team’s win at
Arizona State, bothered him.

Kapono hadn’t felt this way in quite some time. Since the
Bruins began conference play on Dec. 20, Kapono wasn’t
getting open looks and seemed to have lost his stroke. Furthermore,
he had been reduced to the team’s No. 3 option behind forward
Matt Barnes and guard Billy Knight, and was averaging only 15.8
points per game in Pac-10 competition.

But on this day, he got enough room to shoot and his motion felt
smooth. Too smooth, it turned out.

“I got into a rhythm,” said Kapono, who finished
with a game-high 25 in the Bruins’ 96-86 loss. “I was
feeling it and I started shooting too quickly. Then everyone else
started to, too.”

Seeing Kapono rush his shots gave his lesser-skilled teammates
the courage to be shameless.

The ball rotation, responsible for the wide-open shots that the
team was getting in the first half, was gone.

And before the Bruins could look up at the scoreboard, their
lead was gone.

Part of UCLA’s second-half futility, of course, had to do
with Arizona, which increased its defensive pressure ““
especially on Kapono, who was shadowed by freshman guard Salim
Stoudamire.

“We were trying not to let Jason get a lot of
shots,” Wildcat head coach Lute Olson said. “Everything
he threw up was in or was right there.”

Kapono’s offensive output served as little consolation for
the junior forward, who was on the court as his team blew a
20-point lead and lost the game.

“A loss is a loss,” said Kapono, whose left thigh
was wrapped in ice after the game. “Any time you have such a
great chance to win and don’t, you look back and question
what you did. I look at my shots, my defense.”

Although Barnes called this the loss the worst of the season, he
was encouraged by Kapono’s form, which, he said, could
prevent such defeats later in the year.

“It was only a matter of time,” Barnes said.

“He’s the best shooter in the country. We knew that
if we got him the ball, he’d make it.”