BY STEVE HANF
SALISBURY POST

PHILADELPHIA— Earl Watson was not impressed.

Shortly after Duke pulled out a 76-63 victory over Watson’s UCLA Bruins in the Sweet 16, the senior point guard dismissed the team that had just dismissed his.

When the NCAA Tournament resumes Saturday at the First Union Center, Duke won’t be heading on to the Final Four in Minneapolis. Instead, Watson said, Southern California, the upset winner against Kentucky earlier Thursday, will do the honors.

“I think USC is very much more talented than Duke,”Watson said. “USC has the best talent in the Pac-10 and possibly the country. I think USC will beat Duke.”

Watson is entitled to his opinion, of course. He spent 40 minutes on the court with Duke and watched the Blue Devils play some of their worst basketball of the season.

Instead of seeing two of the nation’s premiere programs, the 20,270 fans sat through a rough-and-tumble battle filled with elbows, glares and bricks.

“It ended up being a different game than people anticipated,”Bruins’ head coach Steve Lavin said. “It was more of a half-court slugfest. In the first half, neither team was able to find an offensive flow.”

By halftime, Duke managed just 33 points, its second-lowest total of the season, on 29-percent shooting. The No. 1 seed Blue Devils (32-4) looked like the same team that lost to Florida in last year’s Sweet 16.

“It was kind of disappointing that we were in the Sweet 16 and we came out so sluggish,” freshman guard Chris Duhon said. “We came in here at halftime, looked each other in the eye and said, ‘Hey, we don’t want the same to happen to us as last year.’

“We weren’t ourselves the first half. The second half we played more like Duke.”

Most importantly, point guard Jason Williams was his usual self in the second half.

Williams rattled off 19 straight points for the Blue Devils to finish with a career-high 34. His flurry midway through the second half pushed the lead from three points to eight.

Senior forward Shane Battier, who finished with24 points and 11 rebounds, scored in the post and converted a fast-break layup to stretch the margin to 67-55 with 3:24 to play.

UCLA(23-9)turned the ball over four times in the final four minutes and Duke converted its final eight free-throw attempts to secure the victory.

“In the second half we weren’t able to take care of the ball, and I think that was the difference in the game,”Lavin said. “We turned the ball over at some critical points.”

The Bruins coughed it up 23 times, including nine in a first half that was every bit as ugly as Duke’s. UCLA missed 10 of its first 11 shots and trailed 12-2 with more than six minutes elapsed.

Foul trouble found the Bruins rather quickly. Sophomore forward Jason Kapono, leading the squad with 17 points per game, was whistled for his third with 3:50 to play in the half. Disaster then struck for UCLA when Duke’s Casey Sanders missed an open dunk, got the rebound and was fouled underneath by Kapono — his fourth with 24 seconds remaining before halftime.

He finished with just 12 points on 3-for-10 shooting.

“It was a pretty physical game. Guys weren’t backing off, saying stuff in between plays,” Duke’s Mike Dunleavy said. “They (the refs) let a lot of things go, so you could try and make plays you couldn’t make in a tightly called game.”

He added, however, that a couple of ticky-tack calls came as well, citing a pair against Kapono.

Without its main threat, UCLA turned to Watson, who averages 16 points. He hit several big shots down the stretch, scoring 17, but couldn’t keep up with Williams.

“You try to slow down great players, especially ones that run their team,”Duhon said. “We were trying to slow him down, not let him get one of his 30-point nights.”

Watson didn’t, but the way he saw it, it had nothing to do with Duke’s defense.

“We just beat ourselves by not playing smart and making smart decisions,”Watson said. “Everything happens for a reason, so you have to accept it and move on.”

Like the Devils are. But remember, not past Saturday.

n

NOTES: Battier’s double-double was his fourth straight. He added four steals and a block. … Both squads shot better than 50 percent in the second half, with Duke holding a 54-52 percentage edge. … The Blue Devils went 24-for-30 from the foul line, while UCLA drained 12-of-18 free throws. … Saturday’s game will be played at 7 p.m., CBS announced after Thursday’s festivities. The West Region final between Maryland and Stanford will be televised at 4:30 p.m.