By SCOTT M. REID
TEMPE, Ariz. ? In the age of one and done and college basketball's Generation Me, UCLA coach Ben Howland has faced an unusual problem this season: Get his shooting guard Lazeric Jones to shoot more.
Jones has had the green light from Howland all season, especially after he was shifted from the point to the wing after the opening weekend of Pac-12 play. Yet Jones, a point guard his entire career, continued to have a pass-first mentality, passing up open look after open look.
"We moved him (to shooting guard) after the first two road games of the conference because we wanted to make him more of a primary focus to be a scorer, to be a shooter," Howland said.
Jones might finally be getting the message.
Jones lit up Arizona State with a game-high 20 zone-busting points in a 66-57 victory at Wells Fargo Arena on Thursday night.
Thirteen of those points came in a second half when his 5-for-7 shooting from the field allowed the Bruins to stretch both the Sun Devils' 2-3 matchup zone and the lead. UCLA built a 17-point lead before losing focus in the final minutes.
"I wanted to come out and be more aggressive shooting," Jones said. "That was my mindset, just come out here and not stress too much."
Even with the late letdown, the victory gave UCLA (16-12, 9-6 Pac-12) a huge shot of momentum heading into Arizona on Saturday afternoon. That game will have major implications for both teams' hopes of finishing in the top four spots in the Pac-12 regular season's final standings thus earning a first-round bye in the conference tournament.
The Bruins travel east on Interstate 10, one game in the loss column behind Arizona (20-9, 11-5), Oregon (19-8, 10-5) and Colorado (18-9, 10-5), currently tied for third place.
A UCLA victory in Tucson would not only go a long way to lightening the Bruins' workload in two weeks but would also ease some of the criticism of a team that started the season as Pac-12 favorites before unraveling into dysfunctional underachievers.
"They're one of the best teams in our conference and we beat them earlier this year so we know we could beat them," Bruins forward David Wear said of Arizona.
"We're really focusing hard because we're going into a hostile environment. We haven't got a real, good solid road win in a hostile environment so that will be huge for us to go in there and pull out a win and stop some of those people from talking so much (about UCLA's woes)."
To win in Tucson, UCLA almost certainly will need another big offensive game from Jones.
Jones, known to his teammates as Zeke, has continued to rank among the Pac-12's top playmakers, dishing out 4.2 assists per game to rank fourth in the conference. However, his resistance to taking often wide-open shots from the perimeter has been a continuing source of frustration for Howland and his staff.
Case in point, the Bruins' 66-63 upset loss to St.John's last Saturday. Jones took just eight shots from the field in what should have been a showcase game for UCLA at Madison Square Garden and televised on CBS. Three nights earlier, Jones had just four-field goal attempts against USC.
"We can't win without him taking more shot attempts," Howland said. "Being more aggressive to look to score, especially from 3. He was passing up 3s to drive to guarded shots. (We've told him) 'You're open, you're a good shooter, you worked your tail off to become a good shooter in the offseason, don't pass up the threes.'"
It was a Jones 3-pointer that launched the Bruins on a 10-1 run that finally broke the game open. Jones added a second 3-pointer in a stretch that saw UCLA take a 59-46 lead.
Note: UCLA guard Tyler Lamb was held out of the starting lineup for missing an academic appointment earlier in the week, Howland said.
Contact the writer: sreid@ocregister.com
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