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Damn. That was impressive.

There’s just no better way to describe it.

What UCLA did Sunday, going to Notre Dame and getting arguably its most important win of the season, was the kind of game that tournament dreams are made of.

It was the kind of win that makes a regular season, the kind of win that proves the worth of your basketball team, the kind of win that can’t help but impress the NCAA tournament committee.

And perhaps most incredibly, it was the kind of win that nobody expected.

I didn’t give the Bruins a chance to win that game.

It was a road trip that no one really wanted to make, against a talented team with NCAA tournament aspirations of its own. Dijon Thompson said beforehand that he would rather stay home than make the journey to South Bend, Ind. Coach Ben Howland expressed a similar sentiment. Add to that the fact that UCLA had played its best game of the season Thursday against awful USC, a letdown against the Fighting Irish all but seemed inevitable.

All the pieces were there for a blowout, leaving UCLA’s tournament standing even more up in the air.

But it didn’t happen, and I’ll bet the Bruins are awfully happy they made the trip.

They showed everyone something special on Sunday, taking control of the game early and maintaining the lead late. They really took the crowd out of the game, forcing that leprechaun to get his jollies by dancing with old women. The real jollies of this game, meanwhile, were had by the Bruins and their fans.

Jordan Farmar is a better player than Chris Thomas. Right now.

Arron Afflalo has been the Bruins’ best player the last two games.

Brian Morrison is, without a doubt, the key to this team’s success.

Even with Thompson playing a game far below his high standards, shooting 4-for-15 from the field, UCLA won a game it wasn’t supposed to win.

And when that happens, you can’t help but feel good about things. At the beginning of the game, CBS showed a stat that said UCLA was 1-7 against teams in the top 50, with its only win coming at home against Washington.

That’s not an impressive statistic, and so it serves to add even more luster to this victory.

Though it wasn’t a “must-win” situation for the Bruins, it was an “it’d be really, really nice if they could win” situation.

Logic seemed to suggest that the Fighting Irish would play very well today. They needed a win as much, if not more, than UCLA, and Notre Dame was playing at home. The Fighting Irish had almost a full week to prepare for this important non-conference clash. And it still lost to a better team.

UCLA is better than Notre Dame. That’s perhaps the most satisfying aspect of the entire game for me. In these last two games especially, UCLA’s defense has been tremendous, and good defense will win you a lot of games.

I realize that the Bruins aren’t going to shoot as well as 14-for-23 from 3-point range every game. But they’re also not going to shoot as poorly as 10-for-29 from the field. And, Thompson is undoubtedly going to play better than he played Sunday.

In short, that wasn’t the best UCLA can play, yet the team still produced an incredibly important victory.

Things are coming together for UCLA basketball, and it’s really great to see.

Three days after dominating a bad USC team at home, UCLA outplayed a pretty good Notre Dame team on the road. If this momentum holds, UCLA will sweep the Oregon schools next week and win at least one game in the Pac-10 tournament.

That will get them into the NCAA tournament. And considering that this team starts three freshmen and is only in the second season of Howland’s rebuilding process, you can only say one thing.

Damn. That is impressive.

Regan is a basketball columnist for the 2004-2005 season. E-mail him at dregan@media.ucla.edu.