12 Comments

Dante Moore, not Martin… come on, how can you get that wrong?

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The lack of a spring game feels like a self fulfilling prophecy for the apathy surrounding the football program. They don't care about the product which leads to fans not caring about the product which leads them investing less into the product while extracting what value the product has (which is a bloated number from the mythical "CFB LA Market" which you can say exists but it exists because of transplants coming in with prior allegiances).

I'm not excited to go to home games once the B10 era starts, the home crowd will be outnumbered the first eight years (or whenever the first cycle of pod play ends) because of the lack of meaningful engagement and willingness to create something worth dragging our asses out to Pasadena for.

Look at the before/afters of the crowd for Colorado's spring game. They're creating something, granted it's all based on hype at the moment, that people want to participate in.

UCLA football is becoming the equivalent of the traveling roadshow Yankees from Interstellar except we don't leave LA and if you think we're the Yankees in this scenario then pass the blunt because we're the Washington Generals, for the likes of OSU, Mich, MSU, PSU, Wisc to beat the money out of the pinata of road ticket sales in a city where a lot of their graduates move to (see Rutgers, NYC's college football team).

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In re Men's VB:

"Anyway, with the #1 overall seed, UCLA earned a bye into the semifinal round of the NCAA Tournament. I’m guessing it speaks to the relative lack of men’s volleyball teams in the country that the men’s tournament bracket only consists of seven teams while the women’s bracket is 64 teams deep. Either way, UCLA has a pretty straight shot at winning National Title #121; they’ll face the winner of Long Beach State and Grand Canyon on Thursday, May 4, and a victory puts them in the championship game on May 6."

The NCAA bracket (such as it is) can be seen here:

https://www.ncaa.com/_flysystem/public-s3/images/2023/04/27/Bracket_NCMVB_2023_wTeams%5B4%5D.pdf

It's a PDF and more lucid than the "interactive bracket".

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Let me add that the Women's Beach Volleyball team (and it's either the worst thing for me or the greatest thing for me that this program didn't exist when I was as student) also secured the #1 seed going into their post season tourney. UCLA = #VolleyballU!!!

The 17 team tournament starts on 5/5 and is held in Gulf Shores Alabama (why???), and the Bruins kick off against the winner of the play-in between UT Martin and Texas A&M Corpus Christi. The quarters and semis are the following day and the championship will be on 5/7.

You can see the bracket and game times here: https://www.ncaa.com/brackets/beach-volleyball/nc/2023

Go Bruins!!

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NCAA Men’s Volleyball Semifinal 1: UCLA vs Long Beach State

Set 1: UCLA 25, LBSU 16

The Bruins established an early 4 point lead and never allowed LBSU to make a run. The Bruins pulled away behind some outstanding serving, scrappy defense, and smart attacking decisions. UCLA looks very confident but LBSU played a disappointing first set and will likely provide a stiffer test in set 2.

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