The Japan Times - No. 22 UCLA defeats No. 5 Arizona 84-75 despite Kharchenkov's 38 points

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Trent Perry scored 21 points for No. 22 UCLA, which opened the season Monday night by overcoming a career-best 38 points from Arizona’s Ivan Kharchenkov to beat the No. 5 Wildcats 84-75 in a matchup of former Pac-12 Conference rivals. Kharchenkov, who also had 10 rebounds, topped his previous best of 20 against Denver last Nov. 24. Derek Dixon added 18 points for the Wildcats.

Jaylen Petty and Eric Dailey Jr. each scored 13 points for the Bruins. This was the teams’ first meeting at T-Mobile Arena since Arizona beat UCLA in the 2023 Pac-12 tournament final for the second year in a row. They had split the previous 14 meetings, with the Wildcats winning the most recent a year ago at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California.

Arizona rallied to win that game and almost pulled off another comeback Monday. Trailing by 16 points, Arizona came within a point when Kharchenkov made two free throws with 3:11 left. That set up a somewhat tense final stretch, with UCLA doing just enough to hold on.

UCLA took early charge, breaking a tie by going on a 14-point run to go up 27-13 and eventually take a 43-29 lead into halftime. The deeper Bruins’ bench outscored Arizona’s reserves 17-4 in the first half, the Wildcats’ production largely limited to Kharchenkov, who had 18 points. The Wildcats struggled from outside in making just 1 of 13 3-pointers in the opening 20 minutes.

They appeared to badly miss RJ Godfrey, who is ineligible after a lawsuit he took part in to be able have a fifth season of eligibility was recently denied. Arizona played much better in the second half, but could not overcome the early hole.

Arizona: Host Cal Poly on Thursday night. UCLA: Host North Florida on Friday night.

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Y.Mori--JT