The lead had been lost and it looked like the game might have been too when Steve Alford noisily went about making his points in the timeout huddle.
The UCLA coach tossed his whiteboard to the court. He yelled at his players, never lowering his voice. The message was the same as it had been in the locker room only minutes earlier: The Bruins had to find a way to stand up to one of the nation’s top teams.
“He gave us the answers to the test, as he always says,” sophomore forward Kris Wilkes said of the exchange less than two minutes into the second half, “and we still failed it.