WATSON'S FLAWLESS GAME HAD SHADES OF WALTON.

Byline: Karen Crouse

MINNEAPOLIS - UCLA guard Earl Watson's play Saturday night against Maryland was like Kevin Spacey's acting, Tyra Banks' complexion, the Hope Diamond. It was like the downtown L.A. skyline after the Santa Anas have swept away the smog.

It was mesmerizing. Flawless. Breathtaking.

It broke the spirit of Maryland, which had no rejoinder for the sweetest performance by a UCLA player in the NCAA Tournament since Bill Walton made 21 of 22 shots against Memphis State in the 1973 title game.

In the Bruins' 105-70 annihilation of the No. 3-seeded Terrapins, Watson distributed a school record 16 assists.

In Watson's hands, the basketball some days is a firecracker. But in the biggest game in his 20-year-old life, he handled it like a baby in swaddling clothes. Implausibly, he didn't turn the ball over once in 26 minutes against a defense that prides itself on making opposing point guards feel like they're dribbling into the eye of a hurricane.

Incredibly, he made 6 of 7 shots, including 5 of 6 from beyond the 3-point arc.

Implacably, he added four steals; five if you include his wresting of the spotlight from everybody else on the floor (plus upset-minded Gonzaga in Tucson and Syracuse in Cleveland).

Inexplicably, he did all this just 48 hours after a six turnover, 0-for-3-from-beyond-the-arc showing in a sloppy first-round win over Ball State.

``He did just about everything you can do as a point guard,'' Maryland coach Gary Williams said.

On this night Williams was guilty of a couple of things; not preparing his team for the backcuts by JaRon Rush and Jerome Moiso that begat a half-dozen alley-oop dunks, for one thing. And making sure one of his players - preferably someone who ate garlic cloves for his pregame meal - was breathing in the face of freshman gunner Jason Kapono, for another.

But in his assessment of Watson's play, Williams was not guilty of overstatement.

Never mind the Terrapins; the way Watson was running the team, the Bruins would have beaten the Washington Wizards.

Watson had earned the right to swagger into the postgame press conference. Instead, he sort of limped up to the podium, favoring the right knee he had skinned in the play that augured his august night.

Three-and-a-half minutes into the game, which most people had expected to be a nail-biter, Maryland guard Steve Blake stole the ball from Watson around midcourt. Blake took the ball to the hoop for what looked to bean easy layup.

Watson, though, had other ideas. He swooped in and knocked the ball cleanly out of Blake's hand as the freshman was bringing the ball up to the glass. Blake looked startled and Watson was momentarily stunned; he landed hard against the basket stanchion and suffered a cut above his left eye that probably was going to need two or three stitches. On the way down, he suffered the floor burn on his knee.

At the other end, Jerome Moiso slammed home a dunk to give the Bruins a 14-2 lead and Watson his third assist.

``For him to make a defensive play like that, that tells you the kind of intensity he brought to the game tonight,'' Rush said.

What followed shortly thereafter was the first fireworks display. The Metrodome lit up when Watson lobbed a pass to Rush, who rose with his back to the basket and forcibly guided the ball over his head and through the hoop to put the Bruins ahead 23-19.

Watson would alley-oop the Terrapins to death. He set up four of the highlight-reel plays in the first half alone. The surprise wasn't that he opted time and again for the razzle dazzle - it was clear to anybody who watched UCLA's eight-point win over Ball State that it's UCLA's preferred play.

The shock was that the Terrapins defended it like it was the last thing they expected to see.

When the Bruins' rhythm is right, the alley-oop is a devastatingly effective weapon. It was like a dagger to Maryland's heart. ``I think it takes a little bit out of (an opponent) mentally,'' Rush said.

At the start of the second half, Watson twisted the dagger in deeper when he made four 3-pointers and added a dunk off an alley-oop from Kapono. In four furious minutes it was Watson 14, Maryland 2, and Williams had no choice but to use his final timeout to try to revive his stunned soldiers.

The final 16 minutes, 42 seconds was like a slow-motion replay of a very bad dream for the 16th-ranked Terrapins. For the Bruins, the time flew. Every player who suited up contributed at least one point to the rout.

Watson made it all look elementary.

Of course, as he pointed out, he couldn't have done it without his teammates, who shot 62.5 percent from the field. ``I have the easiest part, just giving them the ball,'' he said.

Yes, but on this night he did it all.