Huskies, Bruins in dogfight for third

Published: Friday, January 30, 1998

Friday, January 30, 1998

M. BASKETBALL: Height of Washington team will be factor in battle at UCLA

By Emmanuelle Ejercito

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

The No. 8 UCLA men's basketball team closes out the first half of the conference season against Washington, Saturday at Pauley Pavilion.

The Bruins (record goes here) and the Huskies are tied for third place in the Pac-10. The winner of this weekend's game will go into the second half of league play owning third place outright trailing Arizona and Stanford.

Washington's starting line-up has two players over seven feet tall. Junior center Todd MacCulloch was last year's NCAA leader in field goal percentage (67.6 percent). This year the seven-footer ranks first in the conference in shooting with a 65.8 percent clip. MacCulloch leads the Huskies (record goes here) in points (18.4) and rebounds (9.4).

7-foot-1-inch power forward Patrick Femerling is the other Washington giant. The junior averages 6.8 points and 7.2 boards.

Washington matched up against Stanford last week and almost handed the Cardinal its first loss of the season. The Huskies had a one-point lead before Stanford's Kris Weems hit a three-pointer at the buzzer to give his team the 74-72 victory.

"Washington is Washington, they are really good," UCLA head coach Steve Lavin said. "They're big and other than Stanford, probably the biggest team in the league. They'll be a handful especially with all of our deficiencies."

However, UCLA's frontcourt has done well against big size this season. J.R Henderson and Jelani McCoy kept 7-1 Cardinal Tim Young and his teammates in check and forced Stanford to defeat the Bruins from the perimeter.

"I always look forward to playing big people," McCoy said. "We should be fine."

Washington hasn't won at Pauley Pavilion since 1987. The Bruins swept the series last year but had to come from behind in Seattle to take the 87-85 victory that clinched their third-straight Pac-10 crown.