LOS ANGELES >> Lonzo Ball’s reasoning is sound.
The UCLA point guard didn’t need to review film of Oregon’s game-winning 3-pointer against the Bruins earlier this season. He had the best vantage point in Matthew Knight Arena when it happened six weeks ago.
The first of UCLA’s three defeats may still sting the most considering its four-point lead with 17 seconds left in the 89-87 loss.
Ball was guarding Dillon Brooks when Oregon’s best player made a contested 3-pointer with .08 seconds to play.
“I know it was a good shot. It was on me,” Ball said. “He made a good play. We get to play them again.”
For the rematch Thursday night at Pauley Pavilion, the roles are reversed. Oregon enters with all the buzz after a 27-point win on Saturday over the same Arizona team that scored 96 points in a win over UCLA at Pauley Pavilion Jan. 21.
The victory vaulted Oregon to No. 5 in the country and into a tie for first place with Arizona in the Pac-12.
UCLA is No. 10 after sweeping last week’s road trip to the Washington schools following its only consecutive losses of the season.
When the Bruins visited Eugene, Oregon Dec. 28, the revived program was the talk of college basketball. Brooks’ shot was responsible for UCLA’s only loss through its first 20 games.
“That does sting you when you know you’ve got the game,” Bruins coach Steve Alford said. “You contested the shot as well as you could contest it and a very good player made a very good shot. But I think the guys have moved on from that.”
This far removed, the Bruins can take solace in the way they competed on the road at Oregon. But UCLA may still be recovering from its latest loss. Reeling from Arizona exposing its defense three days earlier, UCLA looked aimless in an 84-76 loss at USC Jan. 25.
A win over Oregon would seem a boost for UCLA’s confidence and a necessity for its hopes to win a regular season Pac-12 championship.
UCLA trails Oregon and Arizona by two games in the conference standings with seven left in the season and one each against the Pac-12 leaders.
Downplaying the large implications of Thursday’s game, Ball said he is focused on larger goals.
“Since the beginning of the season the focus was to win a national championship, not the Pac-12 title,” Ball said. “We’re just trying to get ready for March.”
The best way the Bruins can prepare for any of their future challenges is to find ways to improve their defense. The most offensively efficient team in the country has incorporated more zone defense of late, tweaking it on the Washington road trip by playing Ball at the top, where he averaged 4.5 steals in two games.
UCLA’s adjusted defensive efficiency, according to kenpom.com, ranks 115th out of 351 Division I teams. The bad news is that no team ranked lower than 39th in the category has made the Final Four in the last five years and no team ranked lower than 88th has made it in the last 10 years.
The good news is UCLA’s defensive efficiency has improved from 127th to 115th since losing to Arizona Jan. 21.
“We’re moving in the right direction, at least since hitting February,” Alford said. “Now we’re going to get arguably our best test of the season playing against a high-octane offense in Oregon. So we’ll have a better understanding of it if it’s something that just happened last weekend or something we can build on.”
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