USC, UCLA Held at Bay

This wasn’t blowing a huge lead in a hostile arena. It wasn’t taking a weak opponent for granted. It wasn’t UCLA sleepwalking, substituting its ‘A’ game with a string of Zs.

It was getting beat, pure and simple.

Sometimes that’s the toughest kind of loss to take.

Stanford steadily pulled away in the last 10 minutes to win at Pauley Pavilion for the fifth year in a row, 86-76, Thursday night in front of a crowd of 12,243 who showed up boisterous and left booing the Bruins.

Never before has a team won five in a row here, but history is the least of the Bruins’ problems. Coming on the heels of squandering a 20-point lead at Arizona, an uncomfortable edginess pervaded the locker room.

“Up to this point, in the games we lost we beat ourselves,” forward T.J. Cummings said. “Tonight, they just out-executed us. They played smarter and took advantage of every mistake we made.”

Not only was UCLA outplayed, Dan Gadzuric wasn’t the best big man, Jason Kapono wasn’t the best clutch long-range shooter, Cedric Bozeman wasn’t the best freshman and Matt wasn’t even the best Barnes.

Julius Barnes, a Cardinal junior from Rowland Heights, scored 23 points, 16 in the second half, when Stanford turned a two-point advantage into its third double-figure victory at Westwood in four years.

Casey Jacobsen, a junior from Glendora, shook off a cold start to score 15 of his 20 points after halftime.

So this is how it works when a player feels at home on the road--Jacobsen popped a three-point basket from NBA range for a 68-60 Cardinal lead with five minutes left, made another to extend the margin to 10 points a minute later and gave his brother a glad-to-be-home hug afterward.

Josh Childress, a freshman forward from Lakewood Mayfair High, overshadowed Bozeman, scoring 14 points and grabbing 12 rebounds.

Cardinal center Curtis Borchardt scored a quiet 13 points, but added eight rebounds and three blocked shots, outplaying Gadzuric, who scored 19 points and made several ferocious dunks, yet was once again compromised defensively because of foul trouble.

Gadzuric had four fouls and Cummings was called for his third with 13 minutes to play and became cautious thereafter.

No. 13 UCLA, 13-5 overall and 5-3 in the Pac-10, played with emotion and purpose. The Bruins just weren’t good enough to avoid losing two in a row for the first time in two years.

With the score tied, 57-57, No. 17 Stanford (12-4, 5-2) used an 11-3 run to seize control. Two baskets by Childress, two free throws by Barnes and the 25-footer by Jacobsen stuck the stake in UCLA. That the Cardinal trio grew up in the Southland, a point not lost on Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery.

“We have a lot of kids from Southern California who enjoy this challenge,” he said.

All of which galled the Bruins to no end.

“We hate Stanford, and they beat us,” Matt Barnes said. “They were better tonight.”

Barnes, who averaged 25 points in the last four games, scored 20 but made only six of 16 shots.

The Bruins were without guard Rico Hines, who sat out for the third game in a row because of lingering effects from a concussion. He was cleared by a doctor Tuesday but experienced headaches before the game.

“We missed Rico’s defense--we have to cut down on penetration,” Cummings said.

Gadzuric couldn’t help getting three fouls in the first half despite making an obvious effort to avoid them. Several times he opted not to contest Cardinal players on drives for layups.

As the game wore on and the fouls mounted, Stanford took control.

“It was a personal goal of mine to beat them on our home floor,” Matt Barnes said.

“And it didn’t happen.”

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