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SEATTLE — UCLA couldn’t get out before committing one last turnover. With 26 seconds left, Washington’s Elijah Hardy picked Prince Ali’s pocket a final time. The UCLA guard glanced hopelessly toward the ceiling of Hec Edmundson Pavilion as the crowd moved toward the exits. The seconds couldn’t run off fast enough.
The Bruins committed 23 turnovers in an ugly 69-55 loss to Washington on Saturday at Hec Edmundson Pavilion, ending UCLA’s two-game winning streak during which it looked like the team was playing its best basketball of the season.
A team-high 20 points from Kris Wilkes, a 33-29 rebounding advantage and a third consecutive game allowing fewer than 70 points allowed were futile in trying to overcome UCLA’s turnovers, which equaled the team’s number of made field goals. It was only one turnover shy of a season-high 24 in the 15-point loss to Liberty that cost former head coach Steve Alford his job.
“We fought, we competed, we did enough good things defensively to win the game,” interim head coach Murry Bartow said. “We did enough – I’m not saying that it’s perfect – but we did enough good things there to win. But we needed 15, 16, 17 more points and when you turn it over 23 times, you just eliminate all that.”
UCLA (12-10, 5-4 Pac-12) silenced the sellout crowd of 10,000 early, getting off to a 12-4 lead. The Bruins used a full-court press to fluster the Huskies (18-4, 9-0 Pac-12) as UCLA scored 10 of its first 14 points off UW turnovers.
Then UCLA’s miscues piled up, 18 of them in the first half.
The Bruins threw the ball out of bounds on lob attempts, recklessly dribbled into the teeth of UW’s 2-3 zone to only get trapped, and got passes picked off by defenders.
UW guard Matisse Thybulle, the reigning Pac-12 defender of the year, had six steals in the first half as the Huskies finished with 14 total. The Bruins casually passed the ball back and forth for nearly 30 seconds and turned it over on a shot-clock violation.
“They play a very good zone,” said redshirt junior guard Prince Ali, who was UCLA’s only other double-digit scorer with 12 points. “I think we were looking at it too much and we were trying not to make mistakes and that led to us making mistakes, so you can’t play like that.”
The Bruins entered the game as the second-most turnover-prone team in the Pac-12, committing 14.9 per game. The Huskies, who extended their winning streak to 11 and have won their nine conference games by an average of 13.1 points per game, forced the second-most turnovers per game in the Pac-12.
It was an imperfect storm for the Bruins.
“We knew it was going to be a hard game,” said Bartow, who could do nothing but chuckle to try to mask his frustration at the mention of the 18 first-half turnovers. “But certainly, we thought we could win, but we knew we would have to play a great game, we just didn’t play good enough. Just turned it over too much.”
UCLA pieced together a 7-0 run midway through the second half that cut the lead to seven points, but was no match for UW’s long-range shooting. The Huskies made 10 of its first 19 3-pointers, including two in an 8-2 surge that snuffed out any late UCLA hopes.
The UW crowd roared louder with every made shot and forced turnover. The Bruins couldn’t slow the purple-and-gold tide.
“Away games, you get into the crowd, the crowd gets into you a little bit,” Wilkes said. “I know it shouldn’t, but that happens and you turn it over it a little bit.”
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