"But this UCLA team is not the UCLA team of the past, and where previous Bruin teams needed to win games with an excellent offense, it was again the Bruin defense that carried the day. UCLA held Colorado to 33.3% shooting on the game, including a ridiculous 28.0% in the second half. The Bruins again struggled to rebound for the second-straight game, which is especially concerning considering Colorado is not a good rebounding team in general, but even that was cleaned up in the second half."
..this is why I pony up my hard-won retirement dough; I am a consummate coward when it comes to watching UCLA. Kinda, sorta like watching a car crash. Not that UCLA is a poor team. Far from it. It's just that these are not games where Kareem or "Morques" or Walton used to mow down traffic in the days of yore. (Anyone here old enough to remember the days in Westwood where the Jack in the Box gave away free fries when the Walton Gang broke a hundred points?)
Dimitri and Joe do excellent reportage.
Anyway, I hope the Bruins don't back off the gas and put it all together, get really blood thirsty, win their next two in a rout and carve a path through the PAC 12 tournament and the NCAAs.
Get those FOUR LETTERS BACK WHERE THEY BELONG and hang #12 in the rafters!
I missed the game today. That we had to grind it out, by hook or by crook, surprised me not. I mentioned it the other day a few factors contributing to the recent phenomenon. They could be overconfident or they have already peaked. Either way, time will tell.
I am least concerned with overconfidence. When tournament time comes, they will perk up and snap out of it - my guess. But if they have already peaked, as evidenced by the inconsistent, struggling performance, then this is unsettling or even ominous to me. They might fall prey to lesser teams and exit early.
Kareem is before my time. Walton was a senior when I was a freshman. In my mind, they underestimated NC State's David Thompson, the original skywalker. David Meyers & company redeemed themselves the following year. I was in San Diego witnessing the 10th coronation. We Love Wooden and UCLA lawn signs were ubiquitous. In the hours after the final buzzer, everyone was honking in the viccinity of the San Diego Arena. Many stayed behind and followed the UCLA team buse out of the parking lots. Some excitedly ran alongside and banged on the bus until SDPD on motorcycle halted it, kept everyone behind before allowing it to proceed out of the area.
Yours truly was happy, ecstatic but not crazy to the extent my cohorts were. I stood back and watched the spectacle in amazement. There is legitimate reason I chose to enroll in UCLA, I said to myself.
I started grad school the year after Coach won his last and retired. Our teams were good then but not the teams of yore. The alumni coach battles were miserable.
Hi, Henry, the site's been down a while. After Coach the bar for our team was so high, a coach revolving door occurred. Well-heeled alumni (Donor$) complained, nothing less than undefeated an the conference championship was acceptable. They drove Gene Bartow out. Soon the job became so intimidating that finding a coach willing to give up their sweet life and move their family to LA was nigh impossible.
Oh I see. I never liked Gene Bartow. Fresh off the championship year, he lost his very first game against Bobby Knight's Indiana in a nationally televised game in St Louis. Wooden left Bartow an excellent line up with two All American forwards - Richard Washington & Marquez Johnson. Unfortunately, Knight's Hoosiers manhandled us. Bartow looked clueless, puzzled and repeatedly rubbed his face in pain towards the end. The whole country saw it.
Bartow was never welcome on campus after that. We were cruel and harsh towards him. At Ackerman Union one day, when I was talking to my TA about the Economic term project, Bartow came in and my TA, being a matured grad student he was, waved and said hi politely. With me, a gung-ho, never say die, brash sophomore then, picked up my stuffs and walked away. It was rude and childish on my part, a nineteen year old Wisconsin kid to whom bruin hoops was all he cared, nothing else.
The two teams again met in the tournament. This time Bartow declared it a revenge game. Sadly, it was anything but and Knight went on to win it all that year. He rubbed it in. At the post game conference, he claimed Wooden hoops extinct, bruins overrated.
Nobody knew it was then the beginning of Knight's long, tumultuous downfall because of his inner demon driven character. Later, Indiana summarily fired him for his out of control behavior on and off the court, his fiery, temperamental outbursts in the locker room - win or lose - in the name of seeking perfection from his players.
Impossible to understand even now is the fact that, warts and all, that insane coach managed to win it two more times and served as the gold medaled US Olympic coach in 1984.
The MacDonalds in Westwood offered free Big Macs for a game ticket stub when we scored a hundred or more points. When we breached 90 the students would start chanting "Big Mac! Big Mac!"
Surprised you didn't single out Jaylen Clark for having a terrible game. He seems to have lost the ability to score, and perhaps, his confidence on offense.
I thought about it, but he at least plays excellent defense most of the time. The scoring problems are not ideal but the Bruins have never really counted on him on that end the way they do on the other.
Tracy Murray is a gentleman. We shook hands. I teased him and said if he could coach me in my backyard. He still lives in Glendora, not too far away from Pasadena where I live.. He grinned widely and patted me on my shoulder.
Congratulations to the Bruins for securing the top seed in this year's Pac-12 tourney! An ugly, Howland-type of win, but a contested, hard-fought victory nonetheless. An impressive accomplishment despite their inconsistent quality of play at times during this season. As in the case of their last Final Four run, I don't think it really matters whether they're able to land a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament or even remain in the West Region bracket. When the Bruins defense is elite, they're capable of beating anyone this year. Now it's time to bring ASU back down to earth and then deliver some payback to the Mildcats to finish the regular season. Go Bruins!
The Good: UCLA swept the road games and is Pac12 Champs.
The Bad: UCLA has not played well since the USC loss and has struggled with lessor teams. Peak too early? Disinterested? Over Confident? Whatever, they are not going far in the NCAA tournament against the elite teams continuing to play at the current level.
I would not say that they haven't played well. They haven't lost a game since that loss, and this is the only one that I would consider to be really close at the end. Their metrics have even improved over the past few weeks (they're now #2 in KenPom, for example). There have been bad runs of play in each game, but every team has those.
I do not look at metrics like KenPom. Just my observations and comparison to the top 25 teams I watch religiously play every Thursday and Saturday. Out of the last eight games, all were close and in contention except for Cal and Oregon State and none of those eight teams are top 25 teams.
This is a good example of why March Madness will be so entertaining this year. No one team is head over heels better than any other; the parity should lead to se several entertaining match-ups.
Alabama literally needed overtime this past week to beat a bad South Carolina team. Kansas barely held on at home against a poor West Virginia squad. Purdue can't stop losing of late. UCLA is fine.
I'm right there with you, Dimitri and Chenalex. Watch enough hoops, and you realize that no team "cruises to victory" every game of the season. AND, that it's a long regular season with ups and downs. This particular year, there is no "runaway dominant team" that is head and shoulders above the rest of the field. UCLA is right there with all the other contenders.
We've been to the second weekend two years running. Let's hope our Bruins make it three years running. Once you get to the Sweet 16, I don't care who you are, what you've done, it's big Kid basketball at that point.
#1 Houston had a strong first half against East Carolina, the EC played them even in the second half. It looks like there are few ranked teams capable of two dominating halves. I think we can but for some reason, just don't. Some of that is coach Cronin and his unwillingness to play guys with three fouls.
My feeling is that our team sorely lacks a killer instinct. They had the opponents subdued, pinned down and then they loosened up their grip - take a cigarette break so to speak ( LOL ) - before they would repeat it again with barely enough efforts to prevail. This is not championship caliber.
I have to disagree with my fellow bruin Chenalex and you, Dimitri, not that you were both wrong and " every team has those " - exhibits similar traits on the court that is. To me , what we have seen shows NCAA hoops is generally having an average to mediocre year. If this trend continues, then the eventual tournament champion may not deserve such title at all because given another day, another place and another time to play again, or perhaps even as soon as the next day, the title winning team may lose in an ugly way to some no name team.
I expect excellent standard, not merely good enough to win. May be I am old school and the good old dynasty days are gone but please, win well even if it happens to be close, at least make it convincingly. Last November at Madison Square Garden in NYC, I saw it for myself. We are capable of replicating it.
Go Bruins! That was a thriller of a game but our warriors gutted it out.
"But this UCLA team is not the UCLA team of the past, and where previous Bruin teams needed to win games with an excellent offense, it was again the Bruin defense that carried the day. UCLA held Colorado to 33.3% shooting on the game, including a ridiculous 28.0% in the second half. The Bruins again struggled to rebound for the second-straight game, which is especially concerning considering Colorado is not a good rebounding team in general, but even that was cleaned up in the second half."
..this is why I pony up my hard-won retirement dough; I am a consummate coward when it comes to watching UCLA. Kinda, sorta like watching a car crash. Not that UCLA is a poor team. Far from it. It's just that these are not games where Kareem or "Morques" or Walton used to mow down traffic in the days of yore. (Anyone here old enough to remember the days in Westwood where the Jack in the Box gave away free fries when the Walton Gang broke a hundred points?)
Dimitri and Joe do excellent reportage.
Anyway, I hope the Bruins don't back off the gas and put it all together, get really blood thirsty, win their next two in a rout and carve a path through the PAC 12 tournament and the NCAAs.
Get those FOUR LETTERS BACK WHERE THEY BELONG and hang #12 in the rafters!
I missed the game today. That we had to grind it out, by hook or by crook, surprised me not. I mentioned it the other day a few factors contributing to the recent phenomenon. They could be overconfident or they have already peaked. Either way, time will tell.
I am least concerned with overconfidence. When tournament time comes, they will perk up and snap out of it - my guess. But if they have already peaked, as evidenced by the inconsistent, struggling performance, then this is unsettling or even ominous to me. They might fall prey to lesser teams and exit early.
Kareem is before my time. Walton was a senior when I was a freshman. In my mind, they underestimated NC State's David Thompson, the original skywalker. David Meyers & company redeemed themselves the following year. I was in San Diego witnessing the 10th coronation. We Love Wooden and UCLA lawn signs were ubiquitous. In the hours after the final buzzer, everyone was honking in the viccinity of the San Diego Arena. Many stayed behind and followed the UCLA team buse out of the parking lots. Some excitedly ran alongside and banged on the bus until SDPD on motorcycle halted it, kept everyone behind before allowing it to proceed out of the area.
Yours truly was happy, ecstatic but not crazy to the extent my cohorts were. I stood back and watched the spectacle in amazement. There is legitimate reason I chose to enroll in UCLA, I said to myself.
I started grad school the year after Coach won his last and retired. Our teams were good then but not the teams of yore. The alumni coach battles were miserable.
" The alumni coach battles were miserable were miserable " - meaning ?
Hi, Henry, the site's been down a while. After Coach the bar for our team was so high, a coach revolving door occurred. Well-heeled alumni (Donor$) complained, nothing less than undefeated an the conference championship was acceptable. They drove Gene Bartow out. Soon the job became so intimidating that finding a coach willing to give up their sweet life and move their family to LA was nigh impossible.
Oh I see. I never liked Gene Bartow. Fresh off the championship year, he lost his very first game against Bobby Knight's Indiana in a nationally televised game in St Louis. Wooden left Bartow an excellent line up with two All American forwards - Richard Washington & Marquez Johnson. Unfortunately, Knight's Hoosiers manhandled us. Bartow looked clueless, puzzled and repeatedly rubbed his face in pain towards the end. The whole country saw it.
Bartow was never welcome on campus after that. We were cruel and harsh towards him. At Ackerman Union one day, when I was talking to my TA about the Economic term project, Bartow came in and my TA, being a matured grad student he was, waved and said hi politely. With me, a gung-ho, never say die, brash sophomore then, picked up my stuffs and walked away. It was rude and childish on my part, a nineteen year old Wisconsin kid to whom bruin hoops was all he cared, nothing else.
The two teams again met in the tournament. This time Bartow declared it a revenge game. Sadly, it was anything but and Knight went on to win it all that year. He rubbed it in. At the post game conference, he claimed Wooden hoops extinct, bruins overrated.
Nobody knew it was then the beginning of Knight's long, tumultuous downfall because of his inner demon driven character. Later, Indiana summarily fired him for his out of control behavior on and off the court, his fiery, temperamental outbursts in the locker room - win or lose - in the name of seeking perfection from his players.
Impossible to understand even now is the fact that, warts and all, that insane coach managed to win it two more times and served as the gold medaled US Olympic coach in 1984.
Life can be mystifying, isn't it ?!?
Yes Marquez was fun to watch. SPTRs were really bad in that time, especially in Pauli. Yes, Life is strange
I remember Big Macs for 100 point games
Who's Big Macs ?!?
The MacDonalds in Westwood offered free Big Macs for a game ticket stub when we scored a hundred or more points. When we breached 90 the students would start chanting "Big Mac! Big Mac!"
I have never been a Big Mac fan. Cup noodles and Kentucky fried chicken were my thing, LOL
Free meant free in student language.
yeah, those were great times :-) I still yell Big Mac at the screen whenever we near that sacred number.
Surprised you didn't single out Jaylen Clark for having a terrible game. He seems to have lost the ability to score, and perhaps, his confidence on offense.
I thought about it, but he at least plays excellent defense most of the time. The scoring problems are not ideal but the Bruins have never really counted on him on that end the way they do on the other.
If only Clark and others would use the backboard to score. Sounds easy!
In the words of Tracy Murray, "Use the backboard!" I should start counting how many times he says it during the games.
Tracy Murray is a gentleman. We shook hands. I teased him and said if he could coach me in my backyard. He still lives in Glendora, not too far away from Pasadena where I live.. He grinned widely and patted me on my shoulder.
I really enjoy listening to Tracy and Josh Lewin. Great chemistry and basketball knowledge. So nice you were able to meet him.
Congratulations to the Bruins for securing the top seed in this year's Pac-12 tourney! An ugly, Howland-type of win, but a contested, hard-fought victory nonetheless. An impressive accomplishment despite their inconsistent quality of play at times during this season. As in the case of their last Final Four run, I don't think it really matters whether they're able to land a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament or even remain in the West Region bracket. When the Bruins defense is elite, they're capable of beating anyone this year. Now it's time to bring ASU back down to earth and then deliver some payback to the Mildcats to finish the regular season. Go Bruins!
I dread Howland style wins. It is constipated, playing basket as if it was New Zealand lawn bowls made my stomach churns. Please, never again.
The Good: UCLA swept the road games and is Pac12 Champs.
The Bad: UCLA has not played well since the USC loss and has struggled with lessor teams. Peak too early? Disinterested? Over Confident? Whatever, they are not going far in the NCAA tournament against the elite teams continuing to play at the current level.
I would not say that they haven't played well. They haven't lost a game since that loss, and this is the only one that I would consider to be really close at the end. Their metrics have even improved over the past few weeks (they're now #2 in KenPom, for example). There have been bad runs of play in each game, but every team has those.
I do not look at metrics like KenPom. Just my observations and comparison to the top 25 teams I watch religiously play every Thursday and Saturday. Out of the last eight games, all were close and in contention except for Cal and Oregon State and none of those eight teams are top 25 teams.
UCLA is an elite team. Every other "elite" team has had issues.
Houston - relatively untested. Despite having best record in college basketball they have the least amount of Quad 1 wins among the top 5.
Alabama - their best player is an accessory to murder and their coach is refusing to suspend him.
Kansas - took a big home blowout earlier in the season, and struggled to beat a WV team at home that barely has a better record than Colorado.
Purdue - their team is all Zach Edey, but they have the worst guards of any team ranked in the AP top 10.
Virginia - Good, not elite defense, but their offense struggles more than UCLA.
Arizona - suspect defense has led to 3 Quad 2 losses.
Tennessee - highest ranked defense in the country, lowest ranked offense among the top 15 teams.
UCLA is definitely just as elite as any other ranked team and will have as good of a chance as any to win the tournament.
This is a good example of why March Madness will be so entertaining this year. No one team is head over heels better than any other; the parity should lead to se several entertaining match-ups.
Alabama literally needed overtime this past week to beat a bad South Carolina team. Kansas barely held on at home against a poor West Virginia squad. Purdue can't stop losing of late. UCLA is fine.
I'm right there with you, Dimitri and Chenalex. Watch enough hoops, and you realize that no team "cruises to victory" every game of the season. AND, that it's a long regular season with ups and downs. This particular year, there is no "runaway dominant team" that is head and shoulders above the rest of the field. UCLA is right there with all the other contenders.
We've been to the second weekend two years running. Let's hope our Bruins make it three years running. Once you get to the Sweet 16, I don't care who you are, what you've done, it's big Kid basketball at that point.
#1 Houston had a strong first half against East Carolina, the EC played them even in the second half. It looks like there are few ranked teams capable of two dominating halves. I think we can but for some reason, just don't. Some of that is coach Cronin and his unwillingness to play guys with three fouls.
My feeling is that our team sorely lacks a killer instinct. They had the opponents subdued, pinned down and then they loosened up their grip - take a cigarette break so to speak ( LOL ) - before they would repeat it again with barely enough efforts to prevail. This is not championship caliber.
I have to disagree with my fellow bruin Chenalex and you, Dimitri, not that you were both wrong and " every team has those " - exhibits similar traits on the court that is. To me , what we have seen shows NCAA hoops is generally having an average to mediocre year. If this trend continues, then the eventual tournament champion may not deserve such title at all because given another day, another place and another time to play again, or perhaps even as soon as the next day, the title winning team may lose in an ugly way to some no name team.
I expect excellent standard, not merely good enough to win. May be I am old school and the good old dynasty days are gone but please, win well even if it happens to be close, at least make it convincingly. Last November at Madison Square Garden in NYC, I saw it for myself. We are capable of replicating it.