By Dylan Hernandez
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
PITTSBURGH - Finally, some progress.
OK, so the UCLA men’s basketball team didn’t suddenly go from being an unranked team to a Final Four contender after beating Ole Miss 80-58 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at Mellon Arena in front of 17,015 Friday night.
The Bruins’ performance, like most of their previous outings, was flawed in several respects. They continued to turn the ball over (18 times) and give up offensive rebounds (16), signs usually associated with short stints in the Big Dance.
But the Bruins (20-11) managed to make a bad team look bad, which they hadn’t been able to do all season.
That, of course, may not be of any importance when eighth-seeded UCLA faces No. 1 seed Cincinnati on Sunday. Yet, it appeared to be a titanic step forward for head coach Steve Lavin’s squad, which made the Rebels (20-11) look like an NIT No. 9 seed and equaled its biggest margin of victory this season.
The Rebels couldn’t hold onto the ball. They missed lay-ups. They missed runners. They missed mid-range jumpers. They missed threes. They let Rico Hines score seven points.
UCLA had faced similarly inept teams before - UC Riverside, Oregon State, UC Irvine, Columbia and Washington State, to name a few - but in almost all of those contests, the Bruins had a late-game let-up, a lapse in concentration.
Not this time.
Ole Miss’ only significant run of the game came late in the first half when unassuming Rebel swingman Aaron Harper hit three straight three-pointers - a surge that hardly could have been prevented.
“We have to keep doing that 40-minute thing,” said freshman guard Dijon Thompson, who scored a career-high 16 points. “If we go out and play hard the whole game, we’ll beat teams.”
Prior to the contest, it was speculated that Ole Miss’ short, quick lineup would give the Bruins trouble. UCLA’s size, meanwhile, was supposed pose a threat for the Rebels, whose tallest starter stood 6-foot-8.
And it was, at first, the most awkward of clashes, a confrontation in which the countless mismatches on the court made the early stages of the contest difficult to describe.
The Rebels, due to the zone thrown at them, couldn’t get any penetration and were forced to take long three-pointers to avoid shot-clock violations. The Bruins, on the other hand, couldn’t get Dan Gadzuric going, since the 6-11 senior was unable to secure position down low.
For a significant portion of the first half, the two squads stared at each other and postured, confused by what they saw unfolding on the court. After 10 minutes of play, the teams had scored a mere 21 points combined.
Then Lavin switched to a younger and smaller lineup. He put Ryan Walcott, Rico Hines, Dijon Thompson, Andre Patterson and T.J. Cummings on the court and pressed.
And pressed.
And pressed.
The defensive pressure led to turnovers, which in turn led to Bruin scores. Between the eight and five minute marks of the first half, UCLA reeled off 15 straight points, building a 28-13 advantage.
Harper’s spurt gave Ole Miss life, but UCLA nonetheless led 36-26 at the half.
“The young guys showed energy and spark,” Lavin said. “We used the hockey-style substitution pattern, which seemed to work well.”
The slaying of the Rebels persisted in the second half. UCLA senior guard Billy Knight, who had 21 points in the game, came out of the locker room and hit three straight threes.
Ole Miss now found itself incapable of getting stops and incapable of scoring. Regardless of whether it faced the zone employed by UCLA’s starters or the press used by the Bruin reserves, the Rebels couldn’t put the ball through the hoop.
The Rebels finished the game shooting 33.9 percent from the floor and hit only 28.6 percent of their 35 three-point field goal attempts. Jason Harrison, Ole Miss’ 5-5 point guard, was unable to score a single point before the final buzzer.
“They played that zone and we couldn’t get the ball inside,” Ole Miss guard Emmanuel Wade said. “They really corrupted our offense.”
“We got behind and it was totally their game plain and simple,” Rebel head coach Rod Barnes said. “They put pressure on us. They pressured us offensively and defensively. When they got the ball, they got out, ran the floor and really hit shots.”
The game was lopsided enough that Lavin gave reserve forward Josiah Johnson some time on the floor.
And when one fan screamed, “Put in the other guy, Lavin,” Lavin obliged and inserted seldom-used center John Hoffart into the contest.
“I’m very proud of the team,” Lavin said. “After the loss to Oregon on Senior Day and getting knocked out of the first round of the Pac-10 Tournament by Cal, it would’ve been easy to be lower than a snake’s belly. We were able to bounce back and show some resilience.”
“It was good to get a big win,” Knight added. “People talk about teams getting hot going into the tournament, but what matters is what you do once you get here.”