Wolverines claw out a victory over Bruins

Call it the curse of the Fab Five.

No. 4 UCLA was stunned at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night, falling 55-52 to Michigan in the semifinals of the 2K Sports Classic (benefiting Coaches vs. Cancer).

Michigan, of course, was home to the original Fab Five in 1991. Some considered it the greatest recruiting class in college basketball history. An extra benefits scandal involving that group all but wrecked the Wolverine basketball program. Thursday was the team's first victory over a top five team in 11 years.

UCLA's own version of a fab five, this year's freshman class, didn't have much of an impact on this one. Bobo Morgan sat out and Drew Gordon, Malcolm Lee and Jerime Anderson combined for 15 minutes, zero points, zero assists, two rebounds, four turnovers and four fouls. The bright spot, relatively speaking, was Jrue Holiday. He scored 13 points in 33 minutes and was a solid 6-of-8 from the field.

The Bruins led wire-to-wire in the first half, building a lead as large as 10 but never really pulling away. Late in the game, they were killed by Michigan's 1-3-1 zone defense and seemed to waste too much time looking for a shot in the closing seconds. Nicola Dragovic came through with a clutch try, but it was too little, too late.

Had the Bruins won, they would have played Duke in the finals. The Blue Devils beat Southern Illinois in the other semi and now UCLA will take on the Salukis in a consolation game. Safe to say ratings will take a hit. Everybody and their uncle wanted to see a UCLA-Duke matchup, even if it meant both heralded teams losing in this round. As mentioned Wednesday, odds of that happening were just silly. Heck, the odds of Michigan winning were pretty silly, alone. The Bruins were a double-digit favorite.

UCLA just edged Miami (OH) last week in an earlier round of the tournament, saving itself a couple weeks of wrath from Coach Ben Howland. Even though the Bruins avoided a lot of extra sprints this week, does anybody else think it will be a tough week at practice?

For David Wharton's report from Madison Square, click here. He mentioned via e-mail that former UCLA Coach Jim Harrick was sitting near Athletic Director Dan Guererro. Lakers General Manager Mitch Kupchak showed up for the early semifinal and watched his former North Carolina coach, the retired Dean Smith, receive an award at halftime. George Raveling, Bob Knight, Mike Krzyzewski and Lou Carneseca were also on hand. That's a lot of collective career W's.

It was a rough day for another top Pac-10 team, as No. 19 USC fell to unranked Seton Hall in the Puerto Rico Tipoff Tournament.

—Adam Rose

Top photo of Darren Collison by Nick Laham / Getty Images
Bottom photo of Ben Howland by Frank Franklin II / Associated Press