STANFORD, Calif. (AP) - Norman Powell had 20 points and eight rebounds, Isaac Hamilton scored 18 points and UCLA survived to beat Stanford 69-67 on Thursday night for its third straight win.
Bryce Alford added 18 points to help the Bruins build a 22-point lead early in the second half before holding off a furious Cardinal comeback. Chasson Randle's running 3-pointer missed as time expired.
UCLA (14-9, 6-4 Pac-12) has won six of eight following a five-game losing streak. The Bruins improved to 2-6 on the road and won their first non-neutral site game outside of Los Angeles all season.
Anthony Brown contributed 19 points and nine rebounds, and Randle scored 13 for Stanford (15-7, 6-4 Pac-12), which dropped consecutive games for the first time since last March. Stanford had won its previous eight games following a loss.
The Bruins led 31-15 with 3:29 left in the first half, seemingly ready to rout the home team. Instead, the Cardinal closed the period with 10 straight points, trimming UCLA's advantage to 31-25 at intermission.
The Bruins burst out of the locker room again with a 19-5 spurt, pouncing on the Cardinal's costly errors. They led by 22 with less than 11 minutes to play when Stanford slowly started to cut the deficit behind a series of long-range shots.
Brown's 3-pointer sliced UCLA's lead to 67-61 with 3:49 remaining. The Bruins grabbed three consecutive offensive rebounds to drain the clock, then watched Stanford missed twice on the other end.
After another botched Bruins possession, Rosco Allen split a pair of free throws. Stanford stopped UCLA again, then Brown put back a rebound to bring Stanford within three with 21.5 seconds to play.
The Cardinal got another chance when Powell missed the front end of a one-and-one, but Randle raced down out of control and lost the ball. Powell made 1 of 2 free throws, then Allen connected on a 3-pointer to cut UCLA's lead to 68-67 with 4.8 seconds left.
Alford was fouled with 3.3 seconds, but only made the second free throw.
Following a timeout, Randle hauled in a pass near half court. He took a couple of dribbles and attempted a running jumper a few feet beyond the arc that banked off the backboard, hit the front of the rim and bounced out.
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Stanford Head Coach Johnny Dawkins
“I think we had too many lapses defensively that allowed them to get on some good runs and build a lead. To their credit, they really shot the ball well, especially from three and I gave our kids a lot of credit in the second half for the effort and energy to get us back in the game with a chance to win at the end. You can’t get behind by that many points in a collegiate game, it just makes it that much harder especially against a good team. We dug ourselves a hole and we couldn't quite climb out of it.”
“We got it to six, so we were thinking we needed to start the second half with renewed energy and focus, to try and keep chipping away at the lead. They ended up building a lead. They started off with a 3-point bucket right after halftime at the top of the key to send it to nine right away and from there they were able to build some momentum again. We thought we had done a good job of taking away some of the momentum at the end of the first half and a basket like that gives them more life and energy. That hurt us, but it was our defense during portions of the game. You can’t defend for 20 minutes, you have to defend for 40. They were playing in a comfort zone and you can’t let teams play comfortable. We let them play comfortable for large portions of the night.”
“It’s a tough play, but by rule it’s the right call. It’s a flagrant call anytime an elbow goes to the face. That's just the way the rules are right now. No question it caught our guys’ attention and we started to really dig in at that point. I give them credit for the effort and energy they put out down at the end of the game to give us a chance to win.”
Stanford Senior Anthony Brown
“The one thing for me personally, is I never feel sorry for myself, you just have to pick it back up. We have eight games left and you have to take it one game at a time. It’s not the first time or first season that we have lost two or three in a row. We started last year losing two in a row so you just have to take it day-by-day. Just as fast as you can lose two you can win three or four.”
“I think the foul got us fired up a little. Coach (Dawkins) got fired up, he was getting into us saying we weren’t playing with any passion or pride. After that happened we had to do something now. We can’t lose by 30 at home.”
UCLA Head Coach Steve Alford
“We knew the last shot was going to be Randle or Brown. We just wanted to call a timeout to set our defense. At least by setting our defense, it makes it a little harder -- it's not a clean pass; his dribble got tripped up a little bit, so he got an off-balance shot instead of him getting a speed set. He still almost made it. But that's how good he is. Everybody in the building knows it's going to him, and he still gets a really good look at it."
"I'm just really, really proud of our young team, to get a road win here. That's huge for our guys. I'd like to say our guys deserved it (the win), but they deserved it, too. You get down 20 at home and battle all the way back, it speaks to a lot of character of them as well. To do what we did through the first 30 minutes was extremely impressive, and then you’ve got to hang on. We missed some free throws, we got a little stagnant offensively and they were making everything. That's not easy to withstand a run like that. But our guys found ways to do it."
“Stanford started making shots. With 10 minutes to go they were probably shooting 30 percent or less. Hopefully some of that had to do with our defense. Sometimes when you're down like that, you throw game plans out and you get really loose, and you start making shots. Rosco Allen made a couple of threes that hurt us, they got a free-throw blockout possession, they started driving it really hard in the zone.”
"There's only one other team that's won here this year -- that's Arizona, ranked in the top 5 in the country. We had them down 15 in the first half and 20 in the second half. That is an incredible amount of work for our young guys. So I don't care if we win by 20 or a half a point; we did a lot of good things to put themselves in a situation to win."
UCLA Sophomore Bryce Alford
"Obviously, we didn't know we were going to get that kind of lead, and we knew Stanford wasn't going to go away [even with a big deficit]. There was still 11 minutes left when we got up 20, and the time started ticking away, and we got lazy. We can't do that. That’s a lesson we needed to learn.”
"Oh man, I was going to be sick if that last shot went in. Going to the free throw line with five or 10 seconds left, that's what I live for, trying to ice the game. Unfortunately I didn't get it done, and fortunately a great player missed a shot. Credit to them, they played hard. They picked up their intensity, once we got up pretty big -- they really started to attack. We just didn't make a whole lot of shots, and they were making a lot of shots."
