By Christina Teller
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
There’s no cause for alarm.
The earthquake-like motion that you might have felt last night
was not due to a natural disaster. It was just the Pac-10
experiencing another conference-wide shake-up.
In the matter of hours, Stanford defeated Arizona, UCLA beat
Oregon State and USC fell to Oregon, creating a four-way tie for
third place among UCLA, USC, Stanford and Arizona.
“It’s like I said before, you need Alan Greenspan to
figure out this conference,” UCLA head coach Steve Lavin
said. “It’s always topsy-turvy.”
Oregon beat USC at the buzzer, 67-65, and comes to Pauley
Pavilion on Saturday, which also happens to be Senior Day for the
Bruins.
The Bruins enter the game coming off a win that was dubbed by
several team members as “ugly” and
“sluggish,” but it wasn’t like the nail-biter
that went down at the Sports Arena.
This could be an advantage for the Bruins. When Cal beat USC in
overtime, the Bears had to face the Bruins just a day and a half
later, after expending a great deal of energy unseating the
Trojans.
But this Oregon team isn’t going to give anything away,
whether or not they’re coming off a taxing win.
“They’re the first-place team, and they know how to
bounce back,” senior forward Matt Barnes said. “We lost
pretty bad up there, so we have some payback to do against
Oregon.”
In UCLA’s previous meeting with the Ducks, senior center
Dan Gadzuric was not much of a factor, going for eight points and
seven rebounds. But he wasn’t alone. The team shot 42 percent
overall and just 7 percent from downtown.
But Gadzuric has been the Bruins’ horse of late, racking
up four double-doubles in seven games, forcing opposing defenses to
hone in on him.
“I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I feel
as if I have been improving my game,” Gadzuric said.
“I’ve started letting the game come to me.”
To upset the Ducks, UCLA has to have consistent games from a
number of players, namely Jason Kapono, Cedric Bozeman and
Gadzuric, and a hot night from either Billy Knight or Matt
Barnes.
Even if UCLA does beat Oregon on Saturday, the Bruins’
final position in the conference depends on the results of the
Cal-Arizona, Stanford-ASU and USC-Oregon State games. With a win
over the Ducks, UCLA would hold an advantage over USC and Arizona,
both of which were swept by Oregon this season.
But the Bruins are confident.
“Don’t worry,” Dijon Thompson said.
“Have faith in Bruin pride. It will bring everything
along.”
One thing is for sure, this conference is going to keep
rockin’ until the final buzzer sounds on Saturday.