UCLA Basketball: Lazar Stefanovic Struggles To Explain Second-Half Collapse At Arizona

It was a miserable moment.

Although your UCLA Bruins blew a 19-point first half lead against the favored Arizona Wildcats, starting small forward Lazar Stefanovic was hardly to blame.

Nevertheless, he seemed as apoplectic as anyone else that the team wound up losing late, 77-71, according to Ben Bolch of The Los Angeles Times.

"It’s hard. We had them," Stefanovic lamented. "We played really well, we played as a team, played really well as a group. We play much, much better every game. It’s a little disappointing, but we already had a little talk in the locker room. We got to stay together."

Across 36 minutes, the 6'6" junior transfer scored 17 points on 5-of-11 shooting from the floor (3-of-7 from long range) and 4-of-4 from the foul line, grabbed a team-leading eight rebounds, dished out two dimes and swiped one steal. Freshman point guard Sebastian Mack's 21 points on 7-of-16 shooting (3-of-9 from long range) paced UCLA in the loss.

On the year Stefanovic is averaging 9.9 points on a deeply underwhelming .341/.319/.837 slash line, 5.6 rebounds, 1.7 assists and 1.2 steals. He's a career 36.1% three-point shooter on 8.6 attempts, and had been expected to serve as a more reliable veteran floor spacer on this year's very young roster. To his credit, he did what he had to do today -- it just wasn't enough.

With a lackluster 8-11 record (3-5 in the Pac-12), UCLA will now have its work cut out for it if the club hopes to make the NCAA Tournament this spring.