100 down. So, why not 100 more to go?

Okay, okay, no one's getting crazy here, but it's nice to be looking forward.  And it's hard not to think about national championships when the subject turns to the Bruins woman's water polo team, our very own dynasty of the water world. 

A year ago next week, the lady Bruins brought us No. 100.

Now, the Bruins, led by Cutino Award finalists Courtney Matthewson and Jillian Kraus, and winners of three consecutive NCAA championships in 2005, 2006 and 2007, look to make it four in a row by capturing their 10th national title overall.

By the way, these kinds of stats are just ridiculous:

And the lady Bruins have it rolling again this year, riding a perfect 30-0 record after capturing their second-straight MPSF Championship after just another win against USC (their 3rd of the season).

Senior Jillian Kraus; Photo by Kyle Lishok

For those of you who haven't been following our lady Bruins, here's a tournament preview of UCLA by the Bootleg:

This year's NCAA Tournament begins today with a 5:00 p.m. matchup against Pomona-Pitzer (17-11) at Avery Aquatic Center at Stanford (the No. 2 seed). The Sagehens, the only Division III team in the tournament, will have their hands full with the Bruins.

The game today will be broadcast live on www.uclabruins.com.  And, should the Bruins advance, here is the schedule for the rest of the weekend:

This should be an interesting weekend.  Good luck ladies,

GO BRUINS.

Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Jill Painter of the Daily News is reporting that incoming QB Kevin Prince has told CRN that he plans to enroll at UCLA early, if there are enough scholarships available. From the Daily News:

Prince, recovering from reconstructive knee surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament, said he could start taking classes in June, but UCLA needs to check its scholarship situation to make sure one is available.

"That's definitely what I want to do now," Prince said. "I don't want to wait anymore. Whether I do (enroll early) or not, I'm preparing to. I talked to coach Neuheisel about it. He was the one who brought it up. He just wants to make sure they have the right amount of scholarships."

Football programs are allowed a maximum of 85 scholarships, and it's unclear how many UCLA still has available. A UCLA official said the school is not over the maximum 25 new scholarships per year.

The school is in the process of figuring out its scholarship allotment for next season. It reportedly offered a junior college offensive lineman a scholarship.

Considering that Cowan will be out for the year and that we don't know how Olson will recover from surgery, I'd say this is a good idea. Prince was slated to enroll in 2009, but I think he'll get a lot out of competing with Crissman, Craft and Rashaan and learning the system from Coach Chow right now.

So hello folks. Once again welcome to BN 2.0. Please make sure to read through Trei and the SBN team's welcome post below. I personally love the "FanShots" section of the new site which now allows anyone to instantly post videos, pictures, links/short posts etc without having to deal with 200 word requirement. So have at it.

Meanwhile, I will kick off my first post on the home page with a little flashback:

Well what followed were the Banners no. 1 (64), 2 (65), 3 (67), 4 (68), 5 (69), 6 (70) and 4 more under Coach John R. Wooden. Yeap. Those grafs are from an article by Curry Kirkpatrick entitled "Ucla: Simple, Awesomly Simple", that was published in the Sports Illustrated issued dated November 20, 1970. It is currently available on SI Vault.

And it is a must read for every alum and students of UCLA who follow our basketball program. The article is full of so many nuggets including this that will crack you up:

Yeah, that really worked out for him. I guess those guys have been working at "gap closing" for 38 years.

What was really interesting to me were these excerpts re. Coach Wooden's relationship with his players and his reputation of being someone who always wanted to be in control:

As for Seibert, here is how the story ended:

Well I will let alums such as Class of 66 and Fox 71 fill us in lot more on those Glory days. But what really struck me about the Seibert story is that it reminded me of some of the stuff that often comes up in talk radio and on the message boards about Coach Howland being too controlling and often too demanding from his players. I am not sure if it was possible to trust in Coach Howland any more than I already do. But reading that article, only reconfirms what I have thought since the day Coach Howland arrived in Westwood. As he is taking back UCLA to where it belongs, once again he is making everything for our program "awesomely simple."

Again make sure to read the entire piece. As I said above, it is a MUST READ for every alum, students of UCLA and the millions of fans who follow the greatest program in the history of this game.

GO BRUINS.

Bumped. Welcome to our new digs everyone. GO BRUINS. -N

I'm not going to do my usual series preview because this week we've got a Q&A with Jake from Building the Dam. Jake gave us a look at the two time defending national champions Oregon St. who enter this weekend a half game up on the Bruins in the Pac 10 standings.

(Questions are in bold)

The Beavers figured to be carried by their pitching in 2008, but entering this weekend the three Oregon St. starters have ERA's of 6.09, 5.18 and 7.69. Why have the starters struggled and how have the Beavers managed to win with such abysmal pitching?

Mike Stutes was supposed to be our ace coming into this season, which he is to some extent, but he hasn't been as effective this year as he was his sophomore and junior seasons. It's hard to tell whether he has just backed off the gas since it's his senior year, or he really is struggling due to a mechanical problem or something to that extent. As for Jorge, I think he's still in post-Omaha shock. He was close to unstoppable in his freshman campaign, and after being named MVP of the CWS and picking up other post-season honors, he's had a tough time finding his footing on the rubber after being on Cloud 9. The third starter is usually Tanner Robles, but we've also seen James Nygren, Josh Osich, and a few others in that position. They're freshmen. Even though the coaches will probably tell you that they could be more effective, the true reason for the high ERA would be lack of experience.

Oregon St.'s Goss Stadium has a very unusual field that is all FieldTurf with the exception of the mound and plate. Have you noticed this becoming a home field advantage for the Beavers and what type of team does the turf favor?
Goss Stadium has a FieldTurf infield, with a natural grass outfield. There are cutouts for the mound and the plate. Living in the northwest, it's a great asset to the program to be able to practice outdoors more often and schedule more games. Many high schools are now installing FieldTurf surfaces, as natural grass baseball fields and the state of Oregon are not the best combination. So it's not that unusual around here. As far as speed, the turf plays fast when it is first installed, since the "grass" is still somewhat matted down. It's now a year and a half old, so the turf will play slower now than it did last season. But you're still going to see more natural hops and quicker speeds than you will on a natural grass field. Since the Beavers are accustomed to the turf and the Bruins aren't, I'd say that the advantage goes to the Beavers. But when it comes down two it, it's not that hard to adjust between grass and turf. 

Starting this weekend, Oregon St. will play 12 games in 17 days to finish the season. Do you see this affecting how Coach Casey uses his bullpen this weekend knowing how much work they have ahead of them?
You have to take into account that only six of the twelve--half-- are league games. The Beavers need every win they can get, but I expect Pat to play to win the UCLA series before he worries about who he's going to throw against Utah Valley. We have a deep bullpen with a lot of freshmen, so they'll likely get some work in those midweek games. We should be able to go with the normal rotation again next week against USC, and likely the week after that against Pacific. If our starters don't get into trouble, we should be alright. But that's been happening a lot lately...

Until the postseason last year, Oregon St. struggled to score runs. This season they lost two of their best hitters from last season and yet they are batting over .300 as a team. How have the Beavers turned around their offense and which players have been the keys to the offensive turnaround?
First of all, the addition of assistant coach Pat Bailey has helped tremendously. Pat oversees the Beaver offense, and is a big reason for the Beavers increased performance at the plate. But beyond that, some particular players are just stepping up. Lonnie Lechelt was a liability on offense last season, and now he's one of our best hitters. Same with Drew George. He's hitting the ball much better. And Ryan Ortiz has stepped in to fill the shoes of Mitch Canham beautifully at the plate. There is still room for improvement though, and there are some guys that are under-achieving. Joey Wong and Jordan Lennerton are the ones that come to mind.

What unheralded Beaver should we keep an eye on this weekend?
Well, that's a tough one. Right fielder Daniel Robertson has the potential to break out any day, and the Beavers desperately need Joey Wong to start hitting the ball better. Same goes for Jordan Lennerton. I'd say watch out for freshman closer Kevin Rhoderick, even though he is somewhat of a "heralded" player. He's a beast.

Finally, you know I can't let you off without putting you on the spot. What's your prediction for this weekend?
I'm not much of a predictions guy, but I know that the Beavers desperately need to win this season. They were in the same circumstances last year when they came down to your place and swept a series that got the Beavers into the tournament. Without those wins they would have probably been left out of the post-season, and would not have gotten a chance to go to Omaha. They hope to do the same thing this year. I'll let the players decide the result.

A big thanks to Jake for the answers which mixed up the regular and sometimes boring series previews with something interesting and new. He's going to post my answers before Saturday's game so I'll link it once it is up for anyone interested.

Here are the starters for this weekend:

Friday, May 9 - 5 p.m. - at OSU's Goss Stadium
UCLA's Tim Murphy, LHP, Jr. (3-5, 3.64) vs. OSU's Mike Stutes, RHP, Sr. (2-6, 6.09)

Saturday, May 10 - 1 p.m. - at OSU's Goss Stadium
UCLA's Charles Brewer, RHP, So. (6-4, 5.45) vs. OSU's Tanner Robles, LHP, Fr. (3-1, 5.18)

Sunday, May 11 - 1 p.m. - at OSU's Goss Stadium
UCLA's Gavin Brooks, LHP, So. (5-2, 5.03) vs. OSU's Jorge Reyes, RHP, So. (3-2, 7.69)

If you want any other info on the weekend's series, check out the official site's preview . As always, you can listen to the games or follow them on GameTracker via the official site.

Hey Bruins Nation,

Today is the big day. We've switched your community over to the new SB Nation sports blog platform. My name is Trei, and I'm here to help you get adjusted to the new home we've built for you. If you have questions or trouble with the new system, post a comment in this thread and myself or one of the team (lovitt, sixfoot6 or odacrem) will try to point you in the right direction.

Before we begin, I want to let you know we still consider this a beta platform, so don't be surprised if you find a few bugs or if everything isn't exactly right yet. We hope you'll take the time to report any problems you encounter at bugreport@sbnation.com. We'll be continuing to make changes and improving things.

Please take a few minutes to read about what's new below. But if you just can't wait to jump in, here are some quick things to check out:

1. Sign up for your SB Nation network account and claim your old blog accounts
2. Once you're logged in, press your  Z  key in any thread with new comments
3. Explore your dashboard and setup your profile
4. Read the guide to the new FanPost editor
5. Install the FanShot bookmarklet and post videos to Bruins Nation from YouTube or images from Flickr
6. Click the "Rec" button on posts and comments to help other people find the good stuff.
7. Customize display options on your Edit Settings page

What Has Changed

SB Nation Network Accounts - the Big Change

Readers across all of our blogs told us they wanted one account to use on every SB Nation blog. To make this work, we're requiring that everyone create a new SB Nation network account. In most cases you should be able to keep your old username, but a few of you may have to choose something new, since every other community in SB Nation will be going through this same transition. We tried to be as fair as possible in deciding who gets to keep which name, using a formula that takes into account length of membership and frequency of activity.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to participate on all of our blogs, but we don't want to encourage everyone to start visiting rival team blogs and initiating flame wars. To maintain friendly communities we ask that you explicitly join each blog in order to participate. It's a two-click process, but it does means accepting each blog's community guidelines. Just as you join each blog individually, you can be banned on each blog individually.

You can claim old accounts from multiple SB Nation blogs, and your new username will be retroactively attached to all your old comments and diaries. So now you'll be able to access all your writings from your single profile page... like magic.

To get started, click here to claim your old blog accounts and create a new SB Nation network account.

FanPosts (the Section Formerly Known as Diaries)

We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans, and these are the blog posts we make. So we call them FanPosts. When you're at a bar telling someone to check out your online sports opinions, you don't have to suggest they read your diary.

FanPosts are displayed differently on the homepage - we include your avatar to give more credit for the time you spend writing great posts. The new post editor has a WYSIWYG view that provides easy formatting. It also auto-saves drafts so you don't have to worry about losing your work when you compose a post within the web browser. And you can now associate teams, players and games with your posts: these tools promote your FanPosts on our new team, player and game pages - across the entire network.

The new system does not work like the old diary editor. For example, in HTML mode the new editor doesn't auto-create a new paragraph from two line breaks. But it does offer a whole array of new features. Look for the blinking help button on the right side of the FanPost editor for quick tips, and take a look at our full guide to writing FanPosts on the new platform.

IMPORTANT - if you write your posts in Microsoft Word or some other off-line editor, you will get the most reliable behavior if you cut & paste your post into the HTML view of the FanPost editor. And if you do that, remember to wrap <p></p> tags around each paragraph so your text doesn't run together.

Visual Redesign

This one is probably the most obvious change of all. Like other major websites working to improve readability for their audience, we've adopted a fixed-width layout optimized for the 1024 x 768 resolution used by the majority of Bruins Nation and SB Nation network users. Use the switcher below the user menu if you prefer the wider layout designed for 1280 monitors. We've introduced a top navigation bar with quick links into old and new sections of the site. We also polished a few edges, made some things larger, others smaller and moved a few boxes here and there. More changes and adjustments to come.

Search

We've completely replaced the old search engine with a new one. We're excited to make it easier to find old posts and comments, but we've only taken our first pass on the tools we're offering. We're focused on making search even better than what you had before, so please know that we're aware search is missing key features and we're working on it.

What's New

Schedule, Scores, Stats and Roster

Bruins Nation now has all the basic information about the UCLA Bruins and hundreds of other teams. During games you'll see a regularly updated line score, and as the season progresses we'll track team stat totals and leaders. This is just our first step, so look for us to publish more detailed and archival stats in the future. The best part about all this sports data is that we've integrated it directly into the blog so. We now have special pages that aggregate all blog posts written about games, players and teams.

Recommending FanPosts

Some writing deserves more attention and more conversation. If you want to bump a FanPost up to the top and keep it there for awhile, just click the 'Rec' link under the body of the post. When a FanPost receives enough recommendations it will make the recommended list.

Auto-refreshing Comments

You no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. If you're logged in, new comments will automatically appear on the page every few seconds. When you post a comment, the page will not refresh either. If you want to quickly cycle through all the new comments, you can press the C key on your keyboard. Unmark a new comment after you've read it with the X key. And use the Z key if you want to umark comments as you're cycling through them.

As you use these shortcuts to cycle through comments, press the R key to reply to the current comment. All these helpful keyboard shortcuts are listed at the top of each comments section for reference.

Recommending Comments

Now you can reward those folks who take the time to look up stats and make smart arguments in the comments. Next to each comment there is an 'actions' link that you can click to find the recommend and flag options.

Flagging Comments

To help the moderators on a site, we've built-in tools that let you flag comments that are spam, trolling or just plain inappropriate. Only moderators can see those flags.

FanShots

Many members of the community just want to post that one link, video, photo or quote, but don't need a full FanPost. We've got you covered: FanShots let you share YouTube videos, Flickr or PhotoBucket photos, quotes from articles, portions of chat transcripts, top 5 lists and simple links. If it's a video or image we'll put a thumbnail on the homepage when you post it.

For those of you who are experienced internet hunter-gatherers of UCLA Bruins material, install the bookmarklet onto the links bar of your browser and share FanShots with the community from wherever on the web you find that killer quote or photo.

Archives

It's much easier to find that post about a certain deadline trade or prospect retro feature. You can browse by year and month.

Avatars

Upload an image so folks can see your custom avatar on your profile, your FanPosts, and all your comments.

Network Profiles

Now that we have unified SB Nation network accounts, your profile will be your central hub for all of your activity on any blogs where you are a member.

Network bar

The top bar stays with you on all SB Nation blogs. It's a quick way to login and logout. When you're logged in, you'll see your avatar and screen name which links to your profile. The icon to the right leads to your Dashboard area where you can edit your settings, profile, account details and any FanPosts or FanShots you've published. As we add more blogs to the new SB Nation network, the My Blogs menu will be a handy way to navigate between the blogs you've joined.

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There are plenty more small changes and additions we've made, so please take a careful look around and explore this new system. We appreciate your patience and hope you'll help us improve the new platform for this and all the other SB Nation blogs.

And in case you missed it, you'll want to start by claiming your old blog accounts and creating a new SB Nation network account.

Freesia39 diaried up the upcoming event featuring Vin Scully and Coach Wooden at NOKIA theater on June 13 in the diaries. That gives me the excuse to let you know about couple of more events that you may want to mark down on the calendar.

The UCLA Alumni association is putting together a "UCLA Day" on campus on May 17th. Tomorrow is the last day to sign up. You can do so by going here. The best part of the website is the section called "myMoments" which features memories like this one from Jeff Torres (Class of 90):

We will start our BN walk today from Baton Rouge. Per Chris Dufresne in the LA Times there has been no movement yet wrt to Morgan’s paperwork at LSU:

Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

You know what's sort of weird to consider?

When Lute Olson took over at Arizona, they were an also-ran program in the conference.

And Olson deserves major respect for creating something out of nothing in the desert. He had many great players come through Tucson and many very good teams. He has multiple Final Four appearances and a single national title.

Now, a national title is nothing to snicker at -- it's a great accomplishment, the ultimate accomplishment. Nothing I can say can denigrate that accomplishment.

But ...

Jim Harrick has a national title. Gary Williams has a national title. Rollie Massimino has a national title. Jim Boeheim has a national title.

Maybe you get the picture: Sometimes you coach long enough and get into the right situation and you're in the right place at the right time enough times and you get the title.

I happen to think Lute Olson has had a great career. I'm not saying he's not a better coach than some guys on that list.

But consider this:

His program is in a shambles. They finished 7th last season and his two best players are in the draft. He's got an entirely new coaching staff (or will, once Josh Pastner takes that job at Memphis). His top recruit is having academic issues (there is an Internet report today that says Brandon Jennings might not qualify -- I bet he does, but still ...)

Add to all that Olson is an older guy and might not coach too many more years.

And, when push comes to shove, he might leave the program right where it was when he took it over -- an also ran -- and the entire Olson era will come and go with one national title, exactly the same amount of national titles that UCLA won during the Olson era.

Think about it: During the Olson era, UCLA had Walt Hazzard, Jim Harrick, Steve Lavin and now Ben Howland. Some of that era was considered sub par by UCLA fans. Harrick had some very good seasons and one really great season. Ben Howland has had three great seasons. But if the Olson era ended today, our record for that time would be very close to Arizona's. Theirs would be better -- I bet they won more conference titles during that span and they didn't suffer the lows of Hazzard and Lavin. But we've been to four final fours during the Olson era with one national title (and an elite eight appearance). We've won at least six Pac 10 titles during that time (I know that Harrick/Lavin won three straight and Howland has won three straight).

The funniest thing is: If Olson's era ended right now, we might actually be better vis-a-vis AZ than we were when he took over. He took over when Hazzard was the coach (I think he was, if it was Farmer, the point is still true). Now, Howland is the coach.

However many years later, we're almost back where we started and though the Olson era at AZ was undeniably a great one, did it really accomplish all that much more than UCLA did during the same time period?

(Side note: Another interesting point is that Arizona will soon -- two years, three years? -- learn what we learned in '75. That it is very hard to replace a legend. Except for a season here and a season there, it took us almost 30 years to find another top coach who would last more than two years. Ask Indiana and Kentucky fans how tough it can be to replace a legend. Arizona is going to find our soon enough.)