FanPost

Ben Ball Practice Notes

Diane has fun notes from Ben Ball practice. Shipp is feeling allright:

Practice didn't end for each of the UCLA Bruins Thursday until 40 free throws were made. "It's not a race to get to 40 first," junior Josh Shipp said. "But if you don't make 40 you'll have to do it again."

Shipp made his 40 then spoke about how he's feeling after a week of tough practices on his surgically repaired left hip. He said he feels the typical muscle soreness that comes after hard exercise, but nothing that concerns him.

"I feel good for the most part," Shipp said. "There's none of the joint pain I had, practice is going good." Meanwhile, AA2 is enjoying his practice matchup with Kevin Love: Junior Alfred Aboya said he has enjoyed initiating acclaimed freshman Kevin Love into the UCLA way of practicing and learning defense.

"He's a strong player and a hard worker," Aboya said. "He won't let anybody step on his feet though. It's been fun playing against him so far."

Aboya still considers himself the strongest man on the team even though he, at 6 feet 8 and 235 pounds, surrenders two inches and 25 pounds to Love. "Still nobody tougher than me," Aboya said. And speaking of freshman Coach Howland is working on Stanback: There is a freshman besides Love on UCLA's roster, and last Tuesday Coach Ben Howland suggested Chace Stanback had plenty of room for improvement.

"Chace had a great practice on Sunday," Howland said. "Then he had a poor practice on Monday. There are a lot of things he has to learn about playing lower. He has to go against good players every day. Josh has been taking it right at him."

"Coach is riding him," said Shipp, who was a teammate of Stanback's at Fairfax High. "But Chace has made a lot of progression. Overall, his game is improving, his ability to shoot it and that's good for him." Hang in there Chace. You are only going to turn out to be one of the baddest player in the Pac-10 and may be the nation (in the long run) because of Coach Howland "riding" you hard.

Keep at it.

As always guys for more Ben Ball updates keep an eye on our friends at Bruin Basketball Report.

GO BRUINS.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.

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