John Blanchette: Methodical UCLA beats Cougars at their own game

PULLMAN – OK, so the Pacific-10 Conference championship did in fact have to go through Pullman.

It’s a start.

The basketball rebirth of 2007 at Washington State is no less remarkable for what occurred here Thursday night, which was UCLA doing what the Cougars take a peculiar pride in – only better, with better athletes, bedrock determination and, yes, a more consistently intelligent approach.

Sounds unbeatable – and it was.

Except that there were the Cougs, down four and a couple minutes to play, with all the stops they needed but not the steady aim for the last bullets in the chamber.

Of course, in basketball of this style, losing by one basket is a hair-tearing near miss. By two might as well be a blowout.

Still, surely you’d think the Cougars were close enough in their 53-45 loss to UCLA in front of an antsy, agitated mob of 11,618 at Friel Court to hunger for another crack at the Bruins – perhaps as soon as next week in the Pac-10 tournament. But like all things in this rookie year of WSU coach Tony Bennett, even obvious conclusions are incomplete.

“We’ve got to play a lot better to play with a team like that,” Bennett said, “or you won’t beat them. Sure, it would probably mean we’d get them late in the tournament. But it’s a heck of a team. If our guys learn from it, I’d like to try it again – but knowing there’s nothing easy against a team like that.”

Wow. When did Russell Athletic start issuing hair-shirt unis?

Well, in Cougar basketball as we now know it, certain dues must be paid before you’re even allowed to hope for a reward. And while the 23 wins this season have made for a wonderful serial, they are currency for memories only – OK, and a better NCAA seed – and not redeemable each night at tipoff.

That goes for the Bruins, too. It’s nice to think they win because of the letters on the front of the shirt, but they would have won Thursday night even if they’d been “skins.”

So there will be no share of the Pac-10 regular-season title for the Cougars for the 66th straight year, and another for the Bruins – their 29th. But it’s not the same old, same old.

“What they’ve done here, ” said UCLA coach Ben Howland, “is nothing short of remarkable.”

True enough. But the only remarkable part of Thursday’s game was the way the Bruins imposed their will on it – or perhaps it was Washington State’s sketchy resistance.

UCLA simply grabbed the game by the throat after halftime with a rather numbing pattern – layup, layup, dunk, dunk, post up, dunk, layup. For a team with an identity based on defense – in particular a swarming, smothering post defense – the Cougars were stunningly ineffectual. UCLA made 12 of its first 15 shots of the second half.

That the Bruins made only one thereafter was not much of a consolation. Because no matter how many stops the Cougars made, they weren’t going to get enough buckets against UCLA’s defense to erase 10 points.

“UCLA does not take possessions off,” Bennett said. “Some teams in the league – and us at times – take possessions off and play for the big swing. UCLA doesn’t do that. Easy baskets aren’t there.”

Surely they weren’t there for Derrick Low, who was 1 of 8 and never a factor. The Cougars have won some on nights when Low’s game was lower case, but that’s not going to work in the company they want to keep.

Championship company.

And this was to be the night. The motivational sideshows were many. An honorary degree presentation for Bennett’s dad, Dick, the new program’s architect. A moment of silence for the memory of Randall Johnson, father of the Cougar logo. A banner hanging for the 1917 Cougars, national champions in an after-the-fact vote.

No, it wasn’t nearly the theater seen at Friel 24 years ago, when coach George Raveling sent forward Aaron Haskins out to massage the National Anthem on his saxophone and jack up the largest crowd in Cougar history – 12,422. The Cougs beat UCLA that night on Bryan Pollard’s tip-in at the buzzer, the crowd not only rushed the floor but shattered a backboard and Polland fainted in the fuss. That moved the Cougs into a tie for the league lead with a game to play – but they lost five days later at Washington.

There is more to play for, to be sure, but there maybe for the first time this amazing season there’s a little hollowness, too.

“Like I told them, you don’t always travel down this road, so let’s make the most of it,” Bennett said. “It didn’t happen.”

But you never know what might.

“If you told me they were going to be in Atlanta, I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Howland, talking about the site of the Final Four – his Bruins a participant in that party just a year ago. “They’re a very tough team to play against.

“Our experience having done it four years in a row now really helped us for tonight. If you’re showing up and it’s a one-time deal, it’s hard. It’s like when you play Princeton or Air Force, or a team that presses for 40 minutes – something you don’t see every day. It’s just hard to play they guys.”

Oh, yeah. And the other guys, too.