UCLA’s mighty duck

It was two guys, the center and the point guard, demanding the basketball for themselves and for each other.

All the commotion around Kevin Love and Darren Collison -- all the noisy fouls and clanking shots, all the bumps and thuds, the thunderous pleas from an arena full of desperate fans -- was white noise around UCLA’s 6-foot-10 center, who made fall-away jump shots, and its 6-foot guard, who made driving layups when it mattered most.

Top-seeded UCLA survived a bullish, confident attack by ninth-seeded Texas A&M; with a 53-49 victory Saturday at the Honda Center that seemed improbable up until Josh Shipp’s block of Donald Sloan’s shot in the lane and Russell Westbrook’s game-ending dunk.

The win advanced the Bruins (33-3) into a Sweet 16 West Regional meeting Thursday in Phoenix against the winner of today’s game between 13th-seeded San Diego and 12th-seeded Western Kentucky.

Collison finished with a game-high 21 points, including consecutive layups in the last 55 seconds that gave UCLA a 49-47 lead and then a 51-49 lead with 9.5 seconds left. He made five of eight three-point attempts and his jump shooting kept the Bruins within range for the first 30 minutes of the game. Love had 19 points, 11 rebounds and seven blocked shots.

It was Love’s fall-away jump shot from near the foul line with 3:03 left that finally drew UCLA from a 36-26 second-half deficit into a 45-45 tie.

When the shot fell, Love ran up the sideline pounding his chest and raising his arms to the crowd begging for more noise. The shot came from Love’s past, he said. It was a shot he used to practice in high school and one, he said, UCLA Coach Ben Howland usually discourages.

“Believe it or not,” Love said, “Ben doesn’t like me to shoot fall-away jumpers, but that’s what I went to and that’s what worked for me.”

It had to work, because, aside from Love and Collison, UCLA’s other three starters totaled nine points among them. Shipp, who averages 12.8 points, was scoreless and in the second half took only one shot.

But it was Shipp who made the final, game-saving defensive play, one that will be argued, at least in College Station, Texas.

After Collison’s final layup gave UCLA a 51-49 lead and after an Aggies timeout, Sloan, a 6-3 guard, drove into the lane and pulled up for the shot. It was knocked away by Shipp and afterward Sloan said he was still waiting for an official’s whistle.

“I went up to take the shot,” Sloan said, “and I felt maybe a couple of arms pulling me down. I just knew for sure I was going to get a foul call because, hey, everybody could see what it was. And to my surprise they didn’t make the call. That kind of shocked me.”

Shipp said he made a clean play and Love, who was originally given credit for the block, said he was not surprised there was no whistle.

“It was a tough call and at the end of games sometimes, and this sounds hypocritical after the Stanford game, but you can’t call stuff at the end if there’s not a lot of contact.”

Love was referencing UCLA’s Pacific 10 Conference regular-season clinching win over Stanford that was sent to overtime when Lawrence Hill was called for a foul while blocking a last-second shot by Collison.

But during a game where the Aggies (25-11), who finished sixth in the Big 12 Conference, outscored UCLA, 26-6, in the paint and shot 56% in the first half, it seemed unlikely UCLA would be close enough to benefit from officials’ calls.

The Bruins, trying to advance to their third consecutive Final Four, got no first-half points from starters Shipp, Westbrook and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, who were a combined 0 for 11 from the field.

Mbah a Moute, who had sat out UCLA’s last two games because of a sprained left ankle, broke that drought with an offensive rebound basket with 17:18 left. It came after Texas A&M; had scored the first seven points of the second half to take a 36-26 lead.

Love followed with a three-pointer and from there the Bruins dug in, holding A&M; to 30.8% shooting in the second half. “If we were going to win this game it was going to have to come from our defense,” Mbah a Moute said.

Overall UCLA blocked 11 shots and used some of those to score fastbreak baskets.

“The thing I love about our team is that they know in their heart they’re always going to win the game,” Howland said. “They’re going to find a way.”

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