The ESPN recap of today’s embarrassing punch in the gut vs. UCLA tells me that the Bears were buried under a barrage of Bruin 3s.  That’s entirely true (UCLA shot 56% from behind the arc?  That’s amazing!), but it’s not where the debacle began.  You might think that the Bears lost because their defense, predictably, failed to show up, but I don’t think that’s the whole story.

During the beginning of the game, Cal’s defense was actually its strength; while the offense struggled (they made their first field goal more than 7 minutes into the game!), it was their defensive effort that kept them in the game.  After Kevin Love went to the bench with his second foul, the Bears finally got into an offensive groove, and their 13-3 run brought them back with 2 of the Bruins.  From there, everything fell apart.

All year, the Bears’ M.O. in their losses has been to fall behind early, expend a tremendous amount of energy getting back in the game, only to fall short, exhausted.  The problem today?  They got down even earlier than normal, and spent even more energy than usual in getting back in the game.

As good as Cal’s defense was early, UCLA’s defense was even better.  Unlike last week’s game, they were really getting after it.  Cal was out of sorts from the very beginning.  In going more than 7 minutes without making a basket, the Bears missed only 4 shots.  That’s it.  The majority of their possessions ended in turnovers, quite a few of them steals forced by the harassing Bruin D.  Given all this, they were fortunate to be down by only 12.

Predictably, especially given the effort it took to beat Washington on Wednesday night, the Bears tired early, and when that happened, their defense began to sag.  But I think it was their uneven offensive effort, which led to lots of turnovers, UCLA steals, and points in transition, that had at least as much to do with the Bruins blowout of the Bears.

Here’s some numbers for the masochists (or Bruins fans) among you:

UCLA steals : 12

12 steals!  That’s no way to win a game.  It’s also tied for the most steals the Bears have given up this year (they gave up the rock 12 times at Kansas State, and that game didn’t go so well either).

Cal Assists/Turnovers : (14/18)

UCLA Assists/Turnovers : (19/10)

You could give me no other information about the game than those numbers above, and I could tell you that with almost absolute certainty that UCLA won the game.  Horrible.  Jerome Randle had 6 turnovers all by his lonesome, but he’s not the only one to blame.

Cal Players with more Assists than Turnovers
Nikola Knezevic (2/1)
Harper Kamp (2/1)
David Liss (1/0)

Cal Players with more Turnovers than Assists
Eric Vierneisal (1/2)
Jamal Boykin (0/1)
Jerome Randle (3/6)
DeVon Hardin (1/2)
Ryan Anderson (3/4)

UCLA Players with more Assists than Turnovers
Kevin Love (4/1)
Russell Westbrook (5/1)
Darren Collison (5/2)
Mustafa Abdul-Hamid (1/0)
James Keefe (1/0)

UCLA Players with more Turnovers than Assists
Josh Shipp (1/3)
Lorenzo Mata-Real (0/1)

Breaking it down, I think you can see that we can’t put all the blame on Randle, or give all the credit to Russell Westbrook.  For both teams, it was a team effort all the way.

Last weekend, the Bears played a heck of game, going into Pauley, catching the Bruins in a bit of a complacent mood, and came thisclose to pulling off the upset.  Today, I think we got a better idea of how large the gap between the two teams still is.

Gosh, I really hope we get an NIT bid, if only so this isn’t the last game we’re all thinking about all summer.

Not much turnaround between last night’s come-from-behind victory over Washington and today’s rematch with UCLA in the Pac-10 tournament, so I won’t dwell too much on what was a thrilling game.  I’ll just mention two quick things:

1) Jamal Boykin started instead of DeVon Hardin.  I’m unsure how healthy DeVon is right now, and if that played a role in the decision, but DeVon was clearly healthy enough to play 20 minutes, more minutes, in fact, than Boykin (although Boykin fouled out with more than 6 minutes to play).  Is the starting decision purely a health decision, or is there some strategy behind it?  Unsure.

2) The critical moment in the game (besides Ryan Anderson’s clutch 3 to seal the deal) obviously came early in the second half.  The Huskies had just quickly turned a two-point halftime lead into a 12-point margin, going on a 13-3 run fueled by three Ryan Appleby treys.  Braun, obviously trying to stem the Husky tide, called timeout.  Now, I don’t know what he said during that timeout, but I’d like to think it went a little something like this:

"What the [expletive deleted] are you guys doing out there?  You want another shot at [expletive deleted] UCLA?  Get out there and play some [expletive deleted] defense!  They don’t even have Jon Brockman!  You’ve got 17 minutes left.  Get out there and get your [expletive deleted] together!

Man, I suck at pep-talks.  Anyway, whatever Braun said, the Bears responded in a big way, going on a 23-4 run to take a lead they would never relinquish.  Though the Bears have scored over 80 points in each of the last 4 games, this was the first one they won, because they’ve also given up over 80 points in each of the last 4 games.  To beat UCLA today, it might not take much defense, but it’s gonna take some defense.

C’mon, Bears!  Play some [expletive deleted] D!