UCLA fails again on the stage it used to own

SAN ANTONIO

I’m not saying it’s fair or right. But we have to start talking about UCLA basketball in terms of failure.

The word has to enter the conversation about the most decorated program in college hoops – 11 NCAA titles – because failure continues to define April for coach Ben Howland’s Bruins.

You see the haunting irony in that last sentence. Only four teams even get to play each April, for crying out loud. For the last three years, UCLA has been one of them.

Three-for-three is a feat accomplished just a few times since 1985. But those other elite programs – Duke, Kentucky and Michigan State – ultimately ended their runs with at least one championship.

UCLA will not, not after Memphis ran the Bruins into the Alamodome hardwood Saturday night 78-63.

Stocked as it is with wonderful athletes – raise your hand if you envy freshman Kevin Love’s future – UCLA tangled with a team, now 38-1, stocked with even better ones.

Two in particular, dashingly quick guards Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts, torched the Bruins for 53 points – Rose for 25, CDR as he’s known for 28 – on 16-for-33 shooting.

Rose dishing to Douglas-Roberts on the fly is one of the most exciting sights in college ball, and while Memphis was credited with 14 fastbreak points to UCLA’s two, it seemed at least 14 more than that.

This was a stunning showcase, not only for Memphis’ backcourt – third guard Antonio Anderson added 12 points – but for the Tigers in general.

“Going into the game we knew we were going to win,” Rose said, and he wasn’t bragging. “We’re just a great team.”

Good, great, whichever, the Tigers led only 38-35 at the half. But they forced UCLA, unfamiliar with playing uphill basketball, to do just that by starting the second half on a 12-4 roll.

The Bruins tried and battled, even as Memphis bottled up Love, holding the powerful post player who averages a double-double to one bucket in the second half.

But there was pretty much nothing for UCLA to do after falling behind by double-digits but to revisit the art of the graceful loss and contemplate its conflicted place in the world. So good, yet so very far from fulfillment.

“This is the hardest of the three,” said junior forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, weary of the sting. “This year we really felt like we had experience, we had a great team.

“It’s tough. It’s good being here three times, but it’s not about being here, it’s about winning. Playing for a program like UCLA, all you expect is winning. So coming here and falling short, it’s another disappointing year for us.”

The last two years, Florida did the deed, snuffing the Bruins in the title game in ’06 and in the semifinals last season. The Gators won last year’s championship as well, which Memphis very well might do Monday night.

Trust me, neither North Carolina nor Kansas will look forward to playing these guys. The San Antonio Spurs wouldn’t look forward to it.

“Whoever’s gonna play them,” said Mbah a Moute, “is gonna have a tough game.”

“We’re playing really well,” Douglas-Roberts said.

Howland has to be tired of hearing stuff like that from the other side, of that long walk to midcourt to shake hands with some dome’s buzzer blaring in his ears. He’ll grow weary now of questions, which naturally came quickly Saturday, about what needs to be done at such a sensitive time in his program’s history.

“It’s very difficult to get here, first off. Unfortunately for us, we’ve run into three really good teams,” Howland said. “I don’t know if some sweeping change is what we need to do.”

Howland trailed off, but then something else came to mind.

“Get a new coach, maybe,” he said wryly.

That’s crazy, of course. Nearly as much as a UCLA locker room full of players who win and win and who, come April, cannot win when winning counts the most.

Tom Robinson, (757) 446-2518, tom.robinson@pilotonline.com