Loss Bad for Bidness

It wasn’t the loss that was so bad for UCLA.

It was how the loss happened.

It was how Bruin players kept jumping in the air without an idea of what to do with the ball. How they wouldn’t fight through screens to challenge Oregon State’s perimeter shooters. How they had no way to find an inside game.

So it was a shellshocked group of Bruins that stumbled into the locker room Thursday afternoon, its four-game winning streak in tatters and its sure-thing NCAA tournament invitation maybe not so sure.

Not after the fourth-seeded Bruins (18-10) suffered a 79-72 loss to fifth-seeded Oregon State (17-13) in the quarterfinals of the Pacific 10 Conference tournament at Staples Center. Oregon State will play top-seeded Arizona, an 88-63 winner over California, in today’s first semifinal.

A team they had beaten, 69-61, a week earlier stomped all over the Bruins. At the point in the first half when Oregon State was up, 36-14, confused Bruins were yelling at each other to guard someone. When Brian Morrison whipped a pass to nowhere, Dijon Thompson threw up his hands and screamed, “Get me the ball!”

The Beavers, who won a Pac-10 tournament game for the first time in 16 years, shot nearly 60% from the field while building a 45-30 halftime lead.

And when it was over, a disconsolate Arron Afflalo rubbed his eyes and said, “This definitely takes away from what we accomplished the last couple of weeks. It erases a lot of the good stuff.”

For the first time since UCLA had finished the regular season tied with Stanford for third place in the conference, Bruin Coach Ben Howland made a no-hedge statement that his team deserved a bid to the 65-team NCAA tournament Sunday afternoon, a brave effort to erase what happened on the floor.

“I feel good about our chances of getting in,” Howland said. “I think we had a very strong year.”

Howland pointed to the RPI ranking of the Pac-10 as the No. 2 conference in the country and UCLA’s own RPI ranking, which has hovered in the high 20s or low 30s the last month.

But Thompson, whose back-to-back three-point baskets midway through the second half sparked UCLA’s strongest comeback bid, wasn’t so upbeat.

“I don’t know where we are,” said the senior, who finished with a game-high 21 points. “If we don’t see our name Sunday it will be our own fault.”

Oregon State Coach Jay John said the focus of his game plan was to slow down UCLA’s freshman point guard, Jordan Farmar, who last week had played his best game of the season with 23 points, seven assists, seven rebounds and only two turnovers against the Beavers.

“We didn’t handle the ball screens very well last week, and during the second half, Farmar was able to take control of the game,” John said. “He is very good, and they have an excellent ability to execute ball screens. We also realized that we had to get a hand up on Dijon.”

Farmar always found a body in his way when he’d try to turn a corner or make a drive toward the basket. And with Farmar stymied, the Bruins too often settled for quick, out-of-rhythm jump shots. Of their 67 attempts, 27 were three-pointers -- and only seven of those went in.

“We played with a lot of anxiety on offense,” Howland said.

On defense, at least in the first half, the Bruins played with a lot of confusion.

“They were getting down on themselves,” Oregon State forward David Lucas said. “They were arguing, yelling.”

The Bruins did score the final seven points of the half after being down, 45-23. And after the Beavers took a 51-33 lead in the second half, UCLA crept within four points twice. After Thompson made his consecutive three-pointers, freshman Josh Shipp grabbed two key rebounds and scored on a fastbreak layup to cut the lead to 55-51. Then Sasa Cuic and Afflalo traded layups, and UCLA was down, 57-53, with nine minutes left.

But the Beavers scored seven of the next eight points and the Bruins didn’t have the energy to fight back again.