Cougs’ long road back ends with first defeat

LOS ANGELES — Out walked guard Kyle Weaver, a Washington State Cougars gym bag draped over his shoulder.

The fourth-ranked Cougars’ unbeaten run over — courtesy of No. 5 UCLA’s 81-74 victory in front of 12,590 at Pauley Pavilion and countless others on television — he was met by an eager Los Angeles-area TV reporter who stuck a camera in his face, light nearly blinding him, and offered a bitter question to ponder.

“You’ve tasted defeat for the first time. How does it feel?” the reporter asked.

Weaver offered a disarming grin.

“Not too good,” the senior said.

Sometimes a loss makes you realize how far you’ve come as a program. About two years ago, WSU had just finished up its 10th consecutive losing season. All it did was lose, it seemed.

On Saturday, the Cougars played one of the most significant regular-season games in school history.

Against a perennial NCAA power.

On the road.

And still, they gained a measure of respect.

“Washington State is the best team we’ve played all year, and it was really a great environment for college basketball,” UCLA coach Ben Howland said.

For much of the game, Howland’s Bruins seemed on the verge of blowing out their Pacific-10 Conference rivals. The Cougars fell behind 11-1 in the first six minutes, missed four consecutive shots (three by Weaver) within 5 feet of the basket on their first four possessions and watched their leading scorer, Derrick Low, leave at the 17:13 mark with two quick fouls.

Their first field goal did not come until 11:24 remained in the half on Taylor Rochestie’s floater in the lane.

By then, the deficit was in double digits, twice reaching 18 points in the first half, the last time on Russell Westbrook’s jumper with 4:10 to go to make it 28-10, capping a 17-6 UCLA spurt.

“We could not get stops. We pride ourselves in trying to make people work for contested shots, and they pretty much got what they wanted,” WSU coach Tony Bennett said.

In the first half, WSU’s three prominent seniors — Weaver (five points), Low (zero) and Robbie Cowgill (zero) were more than doubled in scoring by UCLA freshman Kevin Love (11 points), who dominated on both ends of the floor.

“We’ve got to dig a little deeper,” Weaver said. “There are times in the game we have to realize when to clamp down, when to get stops instead of trying to do things individually.”

Then, one shot — a Low 3-pointer with 11:42 remaining — gave the Cougars (14-1 overall, 2-1 Pac-10) a little life. It trimmed UCLA’s lead to 46-33.

And the 3-pointers kept coming.

After being stifled early, Low cranked it up by scoring all 24 of his points in the second half. At one point, he scored 15 in a row for the Cougars.

“I tried to get open, tried to move a lot more,” Low said. “More and more the game got going, the more we tried to penetrate and move better, coming off screens, and that’s how we got open shots.”

The Bruins never gave up the lead. After Low’s feed to Nikola Koprivica for a basket cut it to 51-41 with 9:17 to go, UCLA (16-1, 4-0) answered with Love’s putback basket and Josh Shipp’s dunk on a nifty pass by Love to make it 55-41.

Enough to get comfortable? Hardly.

Low’s 3-pointer at the 1:34 mark started a stream of accurate outside shooting. Rochestie made one. Low sank two more, from two different spots and lengths. Rochestie added another. Daven Harmeling got in on it, too, making back-to-back 3s.

WSU hit seven 3-pointers in 80 seconds.

“It was going to take a miracle,” Low said, “but we weren’t going to give up.”

Had UCLA not made nine of 10 free throws down the stretch, including seven by Darren Collison, the Cougars might have caught the Bruins.

“Washington State really deserves a lot of credit today,” Howland said. “We did a good job of pressuring the ball, hedging on screens and doubling them. Today, we played with our best intensity all season.”

Minutes after suffering a first loss, Bennett focused on numbers that are unsettling heading into WSU’s home Pac-10 opener Thursday against Oregon State — UCLA’s 14 points off turnovers and 12 fastbreak points.

“I told our guys, ‘Nice job on the flurry coming back, but don’t lose the meaning of the message.’ When it was really game time, we couldn’t hang in there,” Bennett said. “We’re a team, if we’re not really clicking, we’re so vulnerable, and you can see that. We have to get back to really making people earn it. We can’t afford turnovers, breakdowns … and we gave up way too many easy baskets.”