Bruins Get Many Chances but Can’t Seize the Moment

PALO ALTO â€”  One call, one rebound, one furious coach, one inch.

One point.

As the crowd celebrated on the floor at the end of it, as the UCLA players shook their heads and shuffled to their locker room, the scoreboard read: Stanford 67, UCLA 66.

But the difference between who won and who lost here Saturday was many haphazard moments, strung together before 7,391 at Maples Pavilion.

At each pivotal point, as UCLA and Stanford chopped at each other furiously, the Cardinal was quicker to the ball, calmer under fire and luckier with the officials.

And still, after UCLA had been hit with a crucial second-half technical foul on Coach Jim Harrick--which cost his team four points--and had three more points taken off the scoreboard by the officials and had watched Cardinal guard Brevin Knight (19 points, nine assists) take over the game down the stretch . . . the Bruins still had several chances to win the game and leap into an almost insurmountable Pacific 10 Conference lead.

After J.R. Henderson, who led UCLA with 19 points and nine rebounds, made a three-point play on a twisting layup and a foul shot, the Bruins trailed by one, with 46 seconds left.

Stanford wound the clock down, then Knight took a shot that caromed hard off the rim--and straight over the head of Henderson. It went to Knight, who immediately called timeout, with 12 seconds left.

“Everybody just kind of froze,� Henderson said. “And it just happened to bounce right back to him. It really was a heartbreaker. That one rebound, that was the game right there.�

There was one more moment left to play, however: After the timeout, Stanford inbounded the ball to guard Dion Cross, who shoveled the ball softly toward Knight with UCLA’s Charles O’Bannon lunging for a steal. He barely missed, the Bruins didn’t get a foul called--�I killed him,� Henderson said of Knight. “No question. I fouled him�--and the clock ran out.

“It was just a loose ball, and he got it,� O’Bannon said. “Obviously, he wanted it more than I did. I got pushed down, but I should’ve held firm, you know they’re not going to call a foul at the end of the game. It was right there in front of me.�

Really, the whole game was there in front of the Bruins, 16-6, 9-2 in conference play, and still one game ahead of second-place Stanford, which had lost 10 in a row to UCLA.

Stanford (15-5, 8-3) charged back from a quick 15-2 deficit with a 12-4 run of its own, to close the first half trailing by only one, 32-31.

Then came the deep breaths and heavy heartbeats, and the bizarre frozen moments:

--With 15:36 left, at a dead ball with the score tied, 42-42, the Cardinal players headed toward the bench because the scorer properly signaled a television timeout. But the officials did not notice and let O’Bannon inbound the ball to Jelani McCoy alone under the basket for a dunk.

UCLA went ahead, 44-42, with the basket, but, after a long huddle, the officials wiped off the play, and it was a tie game, again.

Said Harrick: “The official gave us the ball, it was live action. The only correction the officials can make once the ball’s been inbounded is a clock error. That wasn’t a clock error. I didn’t want the cheap basket, but I didn’t want the technical, either.�

--Yes, the technical. After a gamelong argument with official Mark Reischling last Thursday in UCLA’s victory over California--without drawing a technical--Harrick was hit for one by Terry Christman with 13:36 left in the game after arguing that O’Bannon’s basket after being fouled by Darren Allaway should have been counted.

The Bruins lost possession of the ball, and watched Cross make two free throws and Knight make a jumper, lengthening the Cardinal lead from 49-44 to 53-44.

“I was just sitting there, I wasn’t really out of control,� Harrick said. “That’s a horrible time. It cost us the ball and four points. A horrible call. Sometimes guys don’t understand the magnitude of their calls. That was crazy, crazy.�

Said UCLA guard Toby Bailey: “That was a bad play, but I’d rather that happen than have him not do anything, just sit down and not be behind us. When he does that, I know that Coach is behind us 100%, and he has our back. That’s good to know.�