LOS ANGELES — UCLA’s Sebastian Mack received a flagrant-2 foul and was ejected against Utah on Sunday.
The freshman guard raised his arm as Utah’s Branden Carlson was setting a screen near mid-court in the first half.
Carlson stayed down on the court holding his throat with a trainer checking on him until walking off to the locker room.
UCLA coach Mick Cronin said after the game that he had not seen a replay of the incident, but it was among the many “dumb fouls” the Bruins committed in a 70-69 loss that snapped a six-game winning streak.
“The reason we were winning was we stopped doing dumb stuff — dumb fouls, in particular, and they were back tonight,” Cronin said, according to ESPN.com.
After a video review, the referees assessed the flagrant foul on Mack and he headed to the locker room. He had four points on 2-of-3 shooting, with UCLA leading 16-12 at the time.
Carlson returned to the game and went on to score the game-winning putback with 0.2 seconds left on the clock in the back-and-forth Pac 12 matchup.
Dylan Andrews had made a jumper for UCLA to put the Bruins ahead with six seconds left.
After a timeout, Utah’s Deivon Smith missed a layup high off the backboard after racing down the court. But with UCLA sending defenders at Smith, Carlson was in position for an easy putback.
Mack is the Bruins’ leading scorer at 13.5 points per game, but Cronin said his absence was not the reason the team lost.
“Excuses are for losers. It was still five-on-five,” he said. “It’s not hockey. They weren’t in a penalty. We got to sub somebody in. We didn’t get the job done. That’s on me. Sure, we would have liked to have him.”
Utah manhandled UCLA, 90-44, in Salt Lake City on Jan. 11, the second-worst loss in program history, but the Bruins had since turned their season around.
“They beat us pretty badly the first time, so we came in, we knew we had to be tough,” he said. “They are also a physical team, so it’s nothing crazy. It happens every game that teams are physical. I don’t know what happened to Sebastian, I didn’t see exactly what happened, but that’s what happens sometimes with physical teams.”
UCLA is now 9-6 in the Pac 12, while Utah improved to 7-8 and improved its position on the NCAA Tournament bubble.
— With AP