KEITH ENRIQUEZ/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Shooting guard Billy Knight is smothered by two Duke defenders in UCLA's Sweet Sixteen defeat.

By Chris Umpierre

Daily Bruin Staff



PHILADELPHIA — In the team's locker room 30 minutes after UCLA's 76-63 loss to Duke, a somber Matt Barnes sat slumped with his beanie pulled down just above his eyes. His arms were stretched out, grabbing the bench he sat on.

Watching him speak to reporters, you could tell he knew.

He knew that his No. 4 seeded Bruins (23-9) had a golden opportunity to beat top-ranked and No. 1 seeded Duke (32-4) Thursday night in the NCAA tournament's Sweet Sixteen held at the First Union Center. He knew that if only his team had executed better, he and his teammates would be talking about playing USC Saturday in the Elite Eight instead of getting ready to board a plane for Los Angeles.

"It wouldn't have taken a superhuman effort for us to beat them," Barnes said. "If we would have just played our game we would have been fine tonight.

"Duke is definitely beatable," he added. "They executed a lot better than we did tonight and that's why they got the victory. But we could have beat them tonight. Definitely."

After UCLA cut the Blue Devils' lead to three points (40-37) with 14 minutes to go, Duke took control of the game with a 10-1 run and never looked back. Super sophomore point guard Jason Williams, who for a period in the second half scored 19 consecutive Duke points, spearheaded the run. Williams led all scorers with a career-high 34 points.

Players like point guard Earl Watson shared Barnes' frustrations that the Bruins weren't able to take advantage of a night when the Blue Devils' weren't themselves.

"Knowing that you should have won and could have won makes (the loss) very hard to accept," Watson said. "We didn't play good at all. The way we played they should have beat us by 40 points. It was a nasty game for us."

If there ever was a night UCLA – a 12 and a half point underdog – would upset the all-mighty Blue Devils, Thursday night was it.

Duke, typically a team that knocks down the three-point shot with impressive precision, wasn't hitting its three-point attempts. The Blue Devils started the game missing their first six treys (which, incidentally, were hoisted in the first three minutes).

  KEITH ENRIQUEZ/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Duke point guard Jason Williams is all over UCLA's Earl Watson as Watson goes up for a shot. The Blue Devils, who entered the game shooting 40 percent from three point land, ended up shooting an atrocious 4 of 19 (21 percent) from behind the three-point arc in the first half. All told, the team shot a horrendous 29 percent from the floor in the game's first 20 minutes

What's more, their best player was having an off-night in the first half. Williams was 2 of 8 from the field and had three turnovers at halftime.

The game was there for the Bruins to take. The team just had to step up and grab it.

The problem was, they didn't. As bad as Duke was in the first half, UCLA was just as bad. The Bruins shot 26 percent (8 of 31) from the field and fell into stretches where they couldn't find the basket.

After UCLA scored in the opening moments of the game, the Bruins missed on their next 13 possessions. It would take seven minutes before a Bruin scored again when Young hit a 15-foot jumper at the 13:01 mark.

By that time UCLA was down 12-4. And while the team improved its shooting percentage to 54 in the second half, their lackluster play in the first half did them in.

"Duke didn't do anything special, it was mostly ourselves," said Watson, whose team committed 23 turnovers. "We beat ourselves tonight as far as not being smart. We did a great job in terms of the physical aspect, but the mental aspect is where we beat ourselves."

"We just didn't make smart decisions," he added. "You have to make smart decisions when you get to this level of the tournament. We didn't play as smart as we should have."

Williams' play in the second half sure didn't help matters. The point guard put his team on his back and rode them to victory.

In an array of mystifying drives to the basket and spectacular shooting from three-point land while in transition, he scored 19 straight Blue Devil points over a span of six minutes in the second half.

Duke Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski credits his team's defense for Williams' outburst.

"Our defensive boards and some loose balls led to some runs where Jason could score," he said. "He's a great player, no question. He carried us during that stretch offensively, but our defense was what let him."

The fact that two star Bruin players got into early foul trouble also played a role in the defeat. Forward Jason Kapono picked up his fourth foul with 24 seconds to go in the first half while Watson got whistled for his fourth foul at the 11:05 mark of the second half.

As a result both players said they played a lot less aggressive in the second half. The prospect of fouling out meant that going for steals and playing assertive defense was out of the question.

"We couldn't afford to lose them (by fouling out) so we had to lay back a little bit on our (full court) press and that hurt us," Barnes said.

UCLA was also hurt by the fact that they didn't jump on Duke when the Blue Devils were staggering in the first half. Instead of going for the knockout in the first 20 minutes, the Bruins only threw jabs.

"We just didn't give Duke our best punch and that's what most of us are so upset about," shooting guard Ray Young said.