The single player who made the single biggest difference in UCLA’s 86-81 overtime loss wasn’t Jason Kapono.
It wasn’t Cedric Bozeman.
In fact, it wasn’t any of the Bruins’ assorted All-American, all-league, all-everything superstars.
No, it was a 6-foot-10-inch, 280-pound center named Jason Keep.
Jason Keep?
Yep, the senior center singlehandedly dictated the pace of the game, from his early uncontested layups to his snarling rebound that gave San Diego 35 precious more seconds on the shot clock in overtime.
“This guy sitting next to me is just hard to guard,” Toreros coach Brad Holland said in the postgame press conference, a smiling Keep sitting contentedly to his right.
Keep finished with 30 points and 16 rebounds in 39 minutes, but his mere presence presented UCLA’s largely ineffective centers with such problems that he forced the Bruin defense to collapse throughout the night.
“A lot of times, I had to come over and help,” junior T.J. Cummings said. “And that stopped our rotation.”
When the rotation stopped, San Diego’s guards needed only to swing the ball around and set a couple of screens to free up shots from behind the arc. The Toreros shot just nine of 29 from three-point range, but they sank shots at crucial moments.
UCLA head coach Steve Lavin seemed to eventually concede the paint to San Diego, as he tried to rotate Cummings and sophomore Josiah Johnson down low. Johnson was most effective at damage control, but Keep continued to rack up three-point plays as the second half wore on.
Freshmen Michael Fey and Ryan Hollins played a combined five minutes – all in the first half – and appeared reluctant to challenge the bigger, more confident Keep.
With Cummings in his first season as a starter and even less experience behind him, Lavin and the Bruins don’t expect to be a post-oriented team. But they’ll also have to at least contend with the likes of Arizona’s Channing Frye and Kansas’ Nick Collison, who – no offense to Keep, the senior from Moscow, Id. – are far more talented.
“He took us out of our shell and gave them rebounds that led to second and third shots for them,” Lavin said.
Not bad for a transfer from Oklahoma State who was once a bloated 300 pounds and didn’t exactly have a wide variety of schools from which to choose.
“I heard from a lot of Division II schools, but not as many D-I places,” Keep said. “These guys (San Diego) gave me the best chance.”
After Keep’s dominance and San Diego’s program-defining victory, the Toreros might think it was more like the other way around.