Thoughts on the Humbolt State game

Pauley Pavillion was pretty packed for an exhibition game. It started to empty out however in the middle of the second half.

I wanted to point out some things that I noticed in this game that you might not hear on the news reports.

The game was a defensively sloppy one for UCLA, but offensively we  shot extremely well. Although our fist possesion looked bad, it was clear after the first minute that this was going to be an easy win.

Darren Collison looked slow in the first half, but I think coach gave him a little talkin'-to because he definitely picked up the speed in the second half. He has a lot of work to do if he's going to carry the load of a PG this season.

The play of Russel Westbrook was the highlight of the game. He's going to be a major factor this season. There was one play where he went coast-to-coast shimmying his way through Lumberjack defenders to the hoop like a running back. There was however a stint where he was leading a bunch of reserves on the floor and everyone looked a little lost. Time will fix this.

Afflalo and Shipp had their usual solid game.

I was pretty impressed by Humbolt State. I hope that this is not going to be a trend throughout the upcoming season, but UCLA was schooled on multiple occasions inside by this supposedly inferior team. This was definitely the Achilles heel of our team last season. I'm actually quite worried about it. We made Cy Vandermeer look pretty good. Wright was defending him most of the time. I don't think we'll get much better even with Lorenzo Mata back. We may not have a dominating inside game until next year with K-Love coming in.

Nikola Dragovic looked like a pretty good all-around player. He got burned defensively a couple of times, but coach Howland will take care of that problem. He's noticeable on the floor because he wears signature "knee-high" socks. Allen Iverson-style... :)

UCLA looked very good considering it's only an exhibition game. This is going to be a good season!