Pac-10 Champions!

What a game. In a battle of top-10 teams that would decide who won the Pac-10, UCLA was losing to Stanford by 11 with five minutes left in the game.

Been there, done that — if any team knows how to come from behind, it’s UCLA, closing on a 18-7 run to send the game into overtime and win 77-67. Watching the game, even though Stanford was dominating at times and the Bruins weren’t looking like they usually did, I kept waiting for the comeback. We’ve all seen this before. UCLA gets down early, and comes back to win.

So many players were key to the big run. Darren Collison, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Josh Shipp and Kevin Love had some big baskets and played great defense. So did Russell Westbrook, and his getting the rebound and the basket after Luc’s missed free throw to cut the lead to one was one of the biggest plays at the end of regulation.

Three straight conference titles is an amazing achievement in the modern-era of basketball. This year’s conference title is even more sweet considering how incredibly deep and tough the Pac-10 is.

Of course, their work isn’t over yet. It would be nice if they beat Cal on Saturday and won the Pac-10 Tournament next week heading into the NCAA Tournament. But even if they don’t, I figure they’ll be at worst the #2 seed in the West barring the NCAA doing anything weird. That’s still pretty good.

Bruins Nation’s Telemachus already has some video highlights of the game here, including the foul on Collison which really was a foul — look at the rest of the body, not just the hand on the ball. I got the photo here.