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Adams' late shot gives UCLA Pac-12 championship

Mar 16, 2014 - 4:03 AM Las Vegas, NV (SportsNetwork.com) - UCLA had missed 12-of-13 shots against Arizona's stifling defense before Jordan Adams rose up and hit the biggest one of the Pac-12 Tournament.

Adams' go-ahead 3-pointer with 43 seconds left lifted the Bruins to a 75-71 win over the Wildcats in a Pac-12 Championship Game thriller.

The game was tied 68-68 before Adams used a flare screen to create separation from Nick Johnson and fired a left wing triple over the Pac-12 Player of the Year.

Aaron Gordon airballed a left corner trey at the other end, but Kyle Anderson missed the front end of a 1-and-1 to give Arizona another chance to tie.

Johnson and Gabe York, though, were unable to connect on their 3-point attempts and David Wear sunk two foul shots with five seconds remaining to seal UCLA's first Pac-12 Tournament title since 2008 in its first year under new head coach Steve Alford.

"These guys have really been committed. We got an edge to us now, which is a lot of fun and to win a championship means a great deal," Alford said.

Kyle Anderson tallied 21 points, 15 rebounds and five assists, while Adams added 19 points for the second-seeded Bruins (26-8), who shot 25.9 percent (7- of-27) in the second half after hitting on 58.1 percent (18-of-31) in the first half.

UCLA finished at 43.1 percent (25-of-58) for the game.

Johnson netted 22 points to lead top-seeded Arizona (30-4), which was looking for its first Pac-12 Tournament Championship in 12 years. The Wildcats have reached the title game in three of the last four seasons.

"We lost to an excellent team. It was a war from start to finish," Arizona head coach Sean Miller said. "Thought the game could have gone either way."

After getting off to fast starts in an 82-63 win over Oregon on Thursday and an 84-59 thrashing of Stanford on Friday, UCLA stormed out of the gate again against Arizona.

The Bruins hit 13 of their first 21 shots from the floor and jumped out to a 31-20 lead with 8:33 to go in the opening half.

Arizona, however, answered with a 12-2 run.

Kaleb Tarczewski poured in six points during the surge, which was capped on a Gordon free throw to cut the gap to 33-32 late in the stanza. Johnson's jumper with three seconds left in the half got Arizona within 43-40 heading into the break.

UCLA's first-half score tied Colorado's point total against Arizona in the semifinals and surpassed Utah's (39) in the quarters.

Neither team led by more than five in a tightly-contested second half which featured six ties and eight lead changes.

After an Anderson jumper staked the Bruins to a 57-52 spread with 11:05 to go, Johnson capped a 7-2 burst with a triple to whittle the deficit to 59-58.

Two Anderson free throws knotted the tilt at 68-68 with 3:57 left and the teams traded misses and turnovers until Adams' triple.

The title game featured the Pac-12's best defense in Arizona (57.6 points per game allowed) and the top offensive team in UCLA (82.0 points).

Game Notes

UCLA shot 84 percent (21-of-25) from the foul line, while the Wildcats finished 37.5 percent (6-of-16) from the charity stripe ... Arizona last won the conference tournament in 2002, its last of four titles in a row.