Hard to win an NCAA championship with two scorers and three guys playing defense. But that was UCLA in its victory over Texas A&M on Saturday.

UCLA 51, A&M 49, with Darren Collison (21) and Kevin Love (19) scoring 40 of UCLA’s 51.

Josh Shipp, designated scorer, had zero points on 0-for-4 shooting, as his steady decline in the second half of the season bottomed out. Russell Westbrook, “star” for half a season, had six points (once that dunk at the end of the game was taken away).The Bruins might survive one more game, considering their next opponent is Western Kentucky. But after that? They’re going to get real teams and will need more than two scorers.

UCLA coach Ben Howland doesn’t seem agitated that his offense has degenerated into two guys. He can do that because he’s defense first, second and last, and he believes if you can hold the other guy to some low number his team will scrounge up enough offense to win.

But this team?

First thing he ought to do is have Josh Shipp take 200 shots every day this week at practice. And maybe sit down the kid and tell him, “hey, you’ve gotta DO something No floating around next week.”

(Funny thing. Shipp got “credit” for blocking the last A&M shot, but a huge photo that appeared on the L.A. Times sports front today clearly shows Shipp failing to touch the ball at all; in fact, his hand is wrapped around the A&M player’s wrist. No wonder he missed. So even Shipp’s “big contribution” was a foul-not-called.)

Howland may want to run a play for Westbrook, just to get him back into the action. Luc Richard Mbah a Moute couldn’t score before he got hurt, and he’s rusty now, so that is a dry hole. But Lorenzo Mata-Real might be able to score against Western Kentucky is he gets the ball close enough to the basket.

Anyway, this is a deeply flawed team, right now. I wouldn’t think UCLA would survive even one more game if they weren’t facing a second-tier opponent on Thursday.

The annoying thing, the frustrating thing, is that UCLA could win an NCAA title this year if it had one even one more vaguely competent scorer. There is no great team out there. It could be the Bruins. If. If.