All pretenses aside, the UCLA women's basketball team's Pac-10 Tournament semifinal matchup with Cal on Friday afternoon was little more than an appetizer for the main course that is the championship game.
It was not even a filling meal, at that, a miniature pig in a miniature blanket.
With big, bad Stanford looming in the tournament final, head coach Nikki Caldwell's toughest job was not calling the perfect back-pick or the ideal screen-and-roll, but simply getting her Bruins to play with effort and emotion against the Bears.
They did, coasting past Cal with a 63-50 win, setting up the tournament final everyone expected, a matchup with the top-seeded and No. 2-ranked Cardinal.
"You can't just look ahead of games," UCLA senior guard Darxia Morris said. "You have to look at what's in front of you. You take a game day by day, you don't look ahead. We just did a good job performing for this game."
Alas, there was a game to be played, if it could be called that. There were games, all right - UCLA playing keep-away from Cal, UCLA playing capture the flag, UCLA simply toying with the Bears.
The Bruins got off to an 11-1 start, led 23-7 and 35-18 and went into halftime up 37-23 before cruising to a 19-point second-half lead.
"We talked about you have a choice every time you step on the floor - a choice to go toe-to-toe with your opponent and compete with them at a level that's higher than them," Caldwell said.
Advertisement
"I thought tonight, for the most part, our team made the choice to elevate their play. And they understand that that's who we are."
While Morris (14 points) and starting backcourt mates Atonye Nyingifa (17 points) and Doreena Campbell (12 points) paced the team offensively - the Bruins moved to 19-0 when three Bruins score in double-figures - it was a true team effort on defense.
UCLA forced 19 turnovers, including 10 in the second half, using an aggressive brand of defense that requires max effort and even more communication.
Fans went to a dinner party and a basketball game broke out. The Bruins talk so much on the court - direct each other, prop each other up, call for help, ask about the weather - it sounds like a gaggle of chattering geese.
The result?
Cal shot 34 percent from the field - 31 percent in the first half - and made just 3 of 19 3-pointers, including 1 for 11 in the second half. With UCLA frustrating the guards with a frenetic full-court press, the Bears often had less than 15 seconds left to run an offense, and the Bruins' lead was just too large.
"We eat up a lot of the clock against our opponents, because we extend our defense 94 feet and we show different looks," Caldwell said. "When we're getting you late - 13, 12 seconds to run your offense - to me that makes a big difference in you being able to come back."
No, Cal was too far down and too far out, and here the Bruins are, trying to avoid the same fate today against the bigger, stronger Cardinal.
In the teams' first matchup, Stanford (28-2) bombarded UCLA much as the Bruins pummeled Cal early, dealing their SoCal rivals a 64-38 loss. The Cardinal sprinted to an 8-0 lead and led 32-15 at the half, holding UCLA (27-3) to 26.9 percent shooting.
The second matchup wasn't much prettier for the Bruins, who shot 31 percent in a 67-53 loss.
Now there is today's matchup with Stanford, scheduled for an 11:30 a.m. tip-off, and UCLA took the first step by not looking ahead to it.
"We've got to be involved in making sure that our ball pressure is there so there are not easy post entries," Caldwell said. "We've got to do things at a very higher level than what we've done. We're capable of doing it.
No comments:
Post a Comment