Bruins got exactly what they needed

Opening the NCAA tournament by playing Mississippi Valley State was exactly what UCLA needed Thursday.

The top-seeded Bruins, nursing assorted aches and pains after playing three games in three days last week to win the Pacific 10 tournament, broke a sweat without breaking stride against the undersized and overmatched Delta Devils.

The Bruins’ 70-29 rout, played out before an early departing crowd at the Honda Center, turned into an exercise in staying loose and limber, sharing minutes and sparing Luc Richard Mbah a Moute’s sore ankle and Kevin Love’s troublesome back any more stress than necessary.

The runaway was the perfect chance for Coach Ben Howland to completely rest Mbah a Moute and save the junior forward for a more urgent situation -- such as Saturday’s second-round game against No. 9 Texas A&M;, which was pushed by Brigham Young on Thursday but rode Josh Carter’s 26 points to a 67-62 victory.

In place of Mbah a Moute, Howland started forward James Keefe for the first time this season. Howland also shuffled his starters in and out as soon as the game became a runaway, which didn’t take very long.

Russell Westbrook played the most minutes among the Bruins, 26. Only Love reached double figures in points -- his 20-point performance was his 10th this season of 20 or more -- but the bigger picture was clearly a rosy one for the Bruins.

“It was real key for us to rest a lot of the guys,” forward Josh Shipp said. “It was good nobody got hurt for this game. Luc got to rest some more, and that was big for us.”

Bigger than the Bruins’ season-high 13 blocked shots, which tied the most in a first- or second-round NCAA tournament game.

Bigger even than their 41-point margin of victory, their biggest since a 109-60 laugher against Wyoming in a first-round game in 1967.

This was about taking the first step on a road they hope will end with cutting down the nets in San Antonio, a journey that will hold far tougher challenges than they faced Thursday.

They did what they needed to do, which included saving their strength for what lies ahead.

“You just want to get a quick sweat out there,” said guard Darren Collison, who played 23 minutes. “As the game progressed, as far as the second half, Coach gave us a little breather which was good, to stay off our legs.

“It’s going to be a long season ahead of us. I’m talking about this postseason. We’ve got to worry about Saturday. Saturday’s going to be a good test for us and it’s good we got rest in the second half.”

Mississippi Valley State was clearly nervous at the start. Its strategy fell apart in the face of UCLA’s size, muscle -- the Bruins had a 52-34 rebounding edge -- and poise.

“We expected them to come out playing hard and make a statement but we wanted to try to do that also,” said senior guard Stanford Speech. “We had a game plan and it didn’t work. We wanted to give up some outside stuff and Kevin Love was hitting the outside jumper and we couldn’t do much about that.

“We had to give up something and we didn’t want to give up the inside so we tried to give them some outside shots, hoping they would miss.”

The Bruins didn’t miss much, shooting 47.4% to the Delta Devils’ 19.7%

“This is an experience for our young guys that are coming back next year, giving them a taste of what it can be like,” Speech said.

“Hopefully they’ll come back next year and give a better showing.”

Speech was impressed with the Bruins and has a hunch they could win the national title that has eluded them in their last two trips to the Final Four.

“If they play everyone like they played us I think they could,” Speech said.

“I hope they go all the way. I just want that as a person. They’re just one of my favorite teams, so I hope they go all the way.”

If they do, they will look back on Thursday’s victory as a fortunate first step.

By playing Keefe for 16 minutes, the Bruins might have found another weapon to deploy against the big and physical Aggies. By not playing Mbah a Moute at all, they gave the 6-8 forward a better chance to be healed when they will need him to be effective.

“It was definitely a big advantage not to play Luc tonight,” Shipp said. “I don’t think anybody played a lot of minutes tonight so we were able to rest Luc another game and hope he can come out firing and be ready to go.”

--

Helene Elliott can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Elliott, go to latimes.com/elliott.