It doesn't sound as if UCLA is faking it. The Bruins really want to add the Pacific 10 Conference tournament title to their regular-season championship.
The third-ranked Bruins (28-3) have been picked by nearly every NCAA tournament bracket forecaster for a No. 1 seeding in the NCAA tournament's West Region -- thus playing in Anaheim and, if the Bruins win there twice, in Phoenix.
There is still the conference tournament to be contested at Staples Center but isn't that for all those other teams -- Arizona and Oregon and Arizona State on the bubble, or Washington and California, which can only advance to the NCAA tournament by winning four games and securing an automatic bid?
"Losing to Cal last year, I remember guys coming back from that game. It was painful, real painful," Bruins guard Darren Collison said. "I don't want that to happen again."
It was a statement repeated by several UCLA players Tuesday, including senior Lorenzo Mata-Real, junior Josh Shipp and sophomore Russell Westbrook. Being eliminated by California in their first Pac-10 tournament game, in overtime, in front of a stunned crowd at Staples Center was embarrassing, deadening, forgettable.
Top-seeded UCLA on Thursday will play the winner of today's game between No. 8-seeded Washington and No. 9 Cal.
"Losing to Cal last year hurt us bad with the seedings," Collison said. "Yeah, we got back to the Final Four, but the fact was we could have had a No. 1 seed and we got a No. 2 seed after losing to Cal."
Freshman center Kevin Love wasn't part of the team that lost to the Bears, 76-69, last year, but he has his own motivation for playing well in the league tournament.
Love said that while watching and listening to the weekend-long debate on television and radio as to whether UCLA got lucky with officials' calls late in its wins over Stanford and California he decided the Bruins have something to prove.
"All that does give us a little extra incentive," Love said. "We're always looking out for something else to keep us motivated, especially now when it comes to crunch time. Anything we can get, anything that we can dig up and post around the locker room would be good for us."
Love paid particular attention to ESPN reporter Doug Gottlieb, who is from Tustin. "I'm not calling Gottlieb out," Love said, "but he was saying UCLA didn't deserve this and that, they didn't deserve [Josh Shipp's] shot, stuff like that."
