Add another note to the Cardinal men’s season-long list of near misses.
A seesaw second half begat a late UCLA run and a subsequent Stanford comeback that the Cardinal (10-12, 4-6 Pac-10) could not complete. The Bruins (11-11, 6-4) won, 77-73, at Pauley Pavilion on Thursday night. With the win, UCLA moved into a four-way tie for first place in the conference.
Senior Landry Fields scored a career-high 35 points on 13-of-18 shooting to go along with 10 rebounds, and sophomore Jeremy Green added 18 points — albeit on 37.5-percent shooting — but additional offensive help was hard to find. No bench players scored, and the remaining starters combined for just 21 points.
The game was a study in contrasts. Stanford, as it has so often this year, relied almost entirely on Fields and Green, with the former tallying his third straight 30-point game. Sophomore Jarrett Mann scored the Cardinal’s first and last baskets of the game (both threes), but otherwise added just one point. Classmates Jack Trotter and Matei Daian failed to create any inside presence. Stanford played without sophomore forward Andrew Zimmermann, whose earliest return date from his stress fracture was set for this week.
Regardless, on the UCLA side, even as Tyler Honeycutt neared a triple-double — he finished with 12 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists — the rest of his teammates remained productive. Reeves Nelson led UCLA with 18 points off the bench, and Michael Roll and Nikola Dragovic netted 16 and 15, respectively. Even Malcolm Lee, who had eight points on just 2-9 shooting, played an integral role with his deadeye free throw shots down the stretch. Every Bruin who played scored, and UCLA only turned the ball over five times, a point that their head coach, Ben Howland, emphasized in his post-game press conference.
Stanford remains winless on the road in Pac-10 play and has not won a game away from Maples in its past nine attempts.
“We get a little bit out of our comfort level on the road,” Fields said.
The Cardinal led 60-54 with just under eight minutes remaining when UCLA tore off an 11-0 run to open up a five-point advantage with just over four minutes to play.
“They executed well and had a lot of second-chance opportunities on that run,” said head coach Johnny Dawkins. “They made key plays down the stretch.”
With the Bruins extending their lead, Stanford did what it does best: rode Fields to a close finish. He scored eight of the next 10 Cardinal points to bring UCLA’s lead down to one with a minute to play.
“Landry Fields is a load,” Howland said. “I told everybody he was an NBA player going into the season.”
“If I came up with zero points and 11 turnovers, and we came up with a win, I’d take it,” Fields said.
Stanford appeared to luck out on the next possession when Reeves Nelson missed both of his free throws — a rare occurrence for the Bruins, as they nailed all but four of their last 16 foul shot attempts — but Honeycutt was able to corral Nelson’s second miss. A subsequent foul on Malcolm Lee led to a three-point Bruins lead with 24 seconds to play. On the Cardinal’s next possession, Green hit a long two-pointer and was hit in the process, giving Stanford the chance to tie the game. But the officials whistled the foul before the shot, negating Green’s bucket. The ensuing inbounds pass went back to Green, who immediately hoisted from beyond the arc; his attempt was off the mark.
The immediate fouls that followed did the Cardinal no good, as UCLA hit all of their remaining tries from the charity stripe. Mann, who guided the offense well down the stretch, was able to keep the game interesting with a desperation-three-pointer that kept the margin close, but Stanford simply ran out of time.
“You could feel they picked up their intensity and they executed down the stretch,” Fields said.
The loss was yet another in a line of close defeats — Stanford has dropped four games by less than four points each, not including an overtime loss to Kentucky earlier in the season.
“We have to be able to withstand,” Dawkins said.
The Cardinal must rebound quickly, as the team will face USC at the Galen Center on Saturday. Stanford defeated the Trojans in its closest victory of the season — a one-point win at Maples in early January — but USC defeated conference leader Cal on Thursday night.
Tip-off is set for 4:30 p.m.