By Christina Teller
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
There’s no cause for alarm.
The earthquake-like motion that you might have felt last night was not due to a natural disaster. It was just the Pac-10 experiencing another conference-wide shake-up.
In the matter of hours, Stanford defeated Arizona, UCLA beat Oregon State and USC fell to Oregon, creating a four-way tie for third place among UCLA, USC, Stanford and Arizona.
“It’s like I said before, you need Alan Greenspan to figure out this conference,” UCLA head coach Steve Lavin said. “It’s always topsy-turvy.”
Oregon beat USC at the buzzer, 67-65, and comes to Pauley Pavilion on Saturday, which also happens to be Senior Day for the Bruins.
The Bruins enter the game coming off a win that was dubbed by several team members as “ugly” and “sluggish,” but it wasn’t like the nail-biter that went down at the Sports Arena.
This could be an advantage for the Bruins. When Cal beat USC in overtime, the Bears had to face the Bruins just a day and a half later, after expending a great deal of energy unseating the Trojans.
But this Oregon team isn’t going to give anything away, whether or not they’re coming off a taxing win.
“They’re the first-place team, and they know how to bounce back,” senior forward Matt Barnes said. “We lost pretty bad up there, so we have some payback to do against Oregon.”
In UCLA’s previous meeting with the Ducks, senior center Dan Gadzuric was not much of a factor, going for eight points and seven rebounds. But he wasn’t alone. The team shot 42 percent overall and just 7 percent from downtown.
But Gadzuric has been the Bruins’ horse of late, racking up four double-doubles in seven games, forcing opposing defenses to hone in on him.
“I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I feel as if I have been improving my game,” Gadzuric said. “I’ve started letting the game come to me.”
To upset the Ducks, UCLA has to have consistent games from a number of players, namely Jason Kapono, Cedric Bozeman and Gadzuric, and a hot night from either Billy Knight or Matt Barnes.
Even if UCLA does beat Oregon on Saturday, the Bruins’ final position in the conference depends on the results of the Cal-Arizona, Stanford-ASU and USC-Oregon State games. With a win over the Ducks, UCLA would hold an advantage over USC and Arizona, both of which were swept by Oregon this season.
But the Bruins are confident.
“Don’t worry,” Dijon Thompson said. “Have faith in Bruin pride. It will bring everything along.”
One thing is for sure, this conference is going to keep rockin’ until the final buzzer sounds on Saturday.