CHICAGO — It was hardly a masterpiece of Big Ten basketball, what with the barrage of bricks and busted possessions scattered throughout. Nor was it probably the night to convince anyone UCLA suddenly could be a serious NCAA tournament contender, not with all the ways it managed to keep Rutgers around Thursday night.
But amid the mess of UCLA’s 72-59 win over 14th-seeded Rutgers was a slippery star point guard in the middle of one of his masterworks, not only lifting the Bruins to victory but passing and rebounding and defending his way into the Big Ten tournament record books.
No one in the tournament’s history recorded a triple-double, until UCLA’s Donovan Dent pulled down his 10th rebound with 2:51 remaining. Seconds later, the Bruins finally buried Rutgers for good with a three-pointer from Tyler Bilodeau, setting up a quarterfinal matchup with Michigan State on Friday at 6 p.m. PDT.
Until the final minutes Thursday, it mostly was a utilitarian star performance from the Bruins senior point guard. Until a late media timeout, Dent, like most watching, had no idea he was closing in on a milestone. But even before a teammate would tell him during a timeout to chase that final rebound, Dent already made plenty of magic in the midst of a 12-point, 10-rebound, 12-assist performance.
“It’s just fun to see him slither around, get open, get in the paint, make great passes,” Bilodeau said.
On a night when none of UCLA’s shooters managed to find a consistent rhythm, Dent did most of his best work in the margins. When forward Xavier Booker blocked a lay-in in the first half, Dent leaped out of bounds to save it and launched it backwards over his head, somehow directly to another teammate. On another occasion, in the second half, he fell out of bounds, reeled in an offensive rebound and delivered the ball safely to forward Eric Dailey Jr. for a lay-in.
When UCLA coach Mick Cronin implored his team at halftime to crash the boards in order to get more second-chance points, it was Dent, the 6-foot-2 guard, who unexpectedly led the way, reeling in four offensive boards in the second half. That was twice as many as Rutgers’ entire team had during the same stretch.
Cronin spent most of the season demanding more of Dent on defense and on the boards. He told him, upon arriving in Westwood, that he turned the ball over too much at New Mexico. He’d be held to a higher standard at UCLA, Cronin said.
That message appears to have stuck down the stretch. In his past six games, Dent has turned the ball over just four times while piling up a stunning 65 assists.
“I give him all the credit,” Cronin said. “He signed on for it. I don’t think he understood what it was going to entail, but he’s gotten so much better along the way.”
The same could be said of the Bruins’ defense, which seems to have ironed out some of its issues in recent weeks. On Thursday night, UCLA held Rutgers to 38% from the field while also managing to keep the Scarlet Knights off the free-throw line. They shot just 10 times from the stripe, while the Bruins were 19 of 23.
UCLA also shut down Rutgers’ leading scorer Tariq Francis, who was fresh off a 29-point performance in a first-round win over Minnesota. Francis didn’t score until the nine-minute mark in the second half. He finished with six points on two-of-11 shooting.
“Guys know that, if you don’t defend, you’re coming out,” Cronin said. “I think that’s reality. Just trying to get guys to realize that it’s contagious both ways.”
Defense will have to carry UCLA to the quarterfinals, considering how lousy its offense looked for most of the game. The Bruins shot just 38% from the floor, worse than in any other win this season. Bilodeau led the team with 21 points. No one else scored more than 12, as the offense failed to find a groove.
The teams spent the first half trading wasted possessions and taking turns with their respective shooting slumps. Even still, Rutgers offered UCLA plenty of chances to bust the game open. The Bruins just failed to capitalize on them, as both teams shot a meager 31%.
But while Dent made his magic, UCLA showed its mettle in the second half. It’ll need more than that to hang Friday with Michigan State, a team that just beat the Bruins a month ago by 23. Thursday was also just the second time this season that UCLA had won a game outside of the Pacific time zone.
“You’ve got to be able to take defense on the road,” Cronin said. “Because your jump shot doesn’t always go on the road with you.”
