They’ve been doing it all year. During the regular season, I kept saying, “at least it’s not March,” every time the Bruins got down at the half only to rally back and win the game. Only problem on Saturday night was that it was March, meaning they don’t come back to win, season’s over. I could handle the charade during the regular season, but man, doing the same stuff in the tourney is just too painful. UCLA trailed almost the entire second half after being down at the half, only to finally tie things up and go on to win in the final minute. I’m sure my pulse was like quadruple the standard rate, and I’ll probably have to be checked for high blood pressure, but at least the Bruins won.
I think there are a few factors at hand with the game. For one, Texas A&M is a good team that took lots of high percentage shots inside to build their lead. But they began committing a lot of fouls in the second half, so the longer the game went on, the less likely they were to win. Secondly, you would have had to have been blind not to realize how much UCLA’s draw opened up with the losses of UCONN, Drake, and Duke. I’m sure the Bruins noticed and thought ever so slightly about their path to the Final Four being easier. As soon as your mind wanders to the future like that, you start losing sight of the present.
So UCLA won, dodging what was quite the scare. And they won with Mbah a Moute, Westbrook, and Shipp playing what will likely be their worst games of the year. To balance it out however, both Collison and Love played out of their minds, showing off studly elements of their games. Though UCLA could wind up going out at any time, they sure showed the mettle of a championship team in their comeback. A few more great parts of the win:
Quote of the night from Gutty Little Bruins (in the form of an AIM chat):
arabcameljockey: im gonna
arabcameljockey: have a heart attack
chuntyman: i was clinicallly dead for 2 minutes
chuntyman: but kevin love gave me mouth to mouth
And photo of the day, from ESPN:
