UCLA can't handle the heat

TUCSON — It was only a few days ago that everything seemed to be going UCLA's way.

The Bruins were on a four-game winning streak and had taken over first place in the Pacific 10 Conference. Their poll numbers were on the rise.

All of that seems to be a distant memory now.

Now 11th-ranked UCLA is stumbling home from a lost weekend in the desert, a pair of defeats that culminated with an 84-72 loss to Arizona at the McKale Center on Saturday.

"It's weird, it comes and goes," forward Drew Gordon said of the team's abruptly departed momentum. "We just have to get to a constant pace."

And the Bruins have to get there quickly, with Pac-10 leader Washington coming to Pauley Pavilion on Thursday night in what appears to be a must-win situation for a UCLA team that hopes for a fourth consecutive conference title.

"This is going to be a gut-check week for us," Coach Ben Howland said.

Howland had hoped that his team (19-6, 8-4 in conference) could bounce back from Thursday night's close loss to Arizona State. But on Saturday, Arizona beat them at their own game.

Namely, defense.

The Wildcats -- on a roll with seven consecutive victories -- were a very different team from the one that lost by 23 points at Pauley Pavilion last month. They extended their zone past halfcourt, pestering the UCLA ballhandlers.

"We tried to trap as much as we could and just frustrate them," forward Chase Budinger said. "It definitely worked."

The Bruins got flustered, speeding up, launching ill-advised shots and throwing careless passes -- "Inexplicable," Howland called it -- on their way to 20 turnovers that translated into 18 points for the Wildcats.

Veterans Darren Collison and Josh Shipp had no real answer for what happened.

"We didn't handle their pressure," Collison said. "It was just one of those games when everybody was misreading everybody."

The Bruins also reverted to old ways, taking 14 of their 26 shots in the first half from three-point range. With little penetration to speak of, they did not manage a single foul shot in those first 20 minutes.

That goes a long way toward explaining why Arizona had a 49-31 lead at halftime.

"It's hard to dig that kind of hole and come back," Howland said.

To their credit, the Bruins fought back in the second half. After trailing by 25 points with a little more than nine minutes remaining, they began to chip away at Arizona's lead. Collison did much of the damage, getting hot from outside on his way to a team-high 26 points.