Honoring Coach: Wooden's Team Cruise To An Easy Victory

by Nestor on Dec 13, 2008 6:10 PM PST in Basketball Comment 10 comments

Bruins honored Coach today (which has become routine under CBH in our appearances at the Wooden Classic) by throttling Blue Demons in the OC upping their early 2008-09 season record to 6-2.

I missed today's game due to Holiday (no pun intended) festivities. So I am looking at the box score of what looked likes our Ben Ball warriors cruising to a comfortable 72-54 18 point win.

Ben Ball warriors led by JS and JH (each scoring team high 14 points) came out strong by running up a 16 point lead at the half:

Photo: Christian Petersen/Getty Images (via Yahoo)

JH not only led the team in scoring but also in assists (5) and rebounds (6), 4 of which came from the offensive side of the glass.

Again looking at the ESPN box score, play-by-play list, and our game thread (BTW thanks to those who were posting scores, always much appreciated by those who check in via our berries and iphones) here it appears to me that the outcome was never in doubt. It looks like our frosh got some decent chunk of mins in the second half.

Also, it looks like the Ben Ball warriors held the Demons to 40.4% shooting and I am going to assume (and you can correct if my assumption is off base) it would have been much lower if not for garbage time in the second half.

Anyway, from the box score at least it looks we had a nice afternoon in the Honda Center. I am sure there will be lot of details to improve on. Yet given the upsets we have seen today around the nation as Tennessee and Kansas went down against lesser opponents, I for one am feeling good about our Warriors cruising to an easy win after going through finals week.

If you watched the game post your thoughts here and if you have extensive analysis to share, put them up in FanPosts.

So with that the court is all yours. Fire away.

GO BRUINS.

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Free throws

Players need to continue to work on them or else it will be a problem child with this team this season. Surprised that Josh Shipp was shooting 65% from the line entering the game. Say what you will about the offense, but when they are patient and moving the ball around to get a good look, that is all you can ask and very nice to see. I’d rather have that than one-on-one play leading to bad shots. It’s not like the Bruins were slowing the game down intentionally, they were just very patient in their offense to get good looks.

by UCLA4Life on Dec 13, 2008 6:41 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

DePaul

is the type of team CBH likes to schedule before Pac-10 play begins. They do something he wants his team to work on – in this case – zone defense. As a fan, I would much rather see the Bruins play a ranked team, especially at the Wooden Classic. But, as 3 Final Four appearances in a row prove, there is a method to his madness. Because Howland coaches the entire game, regardless of the score, he doesn’t allow his players to have a “garbage time” mentality. This will be especially important this year since our Freshmen (other than JH), have a long way to go before March Madness begins.

by kkucla on Dec 13, 2008 7:13 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

CBH usually likes to play a good team in the Wooden Classic

as evidenced by A&M 2 years ago and Davidson last year because we get a good test and it counts as a neutral court win over a good team despite it being similar to a home game for us. This season we got Depaul, a pretty bad team because the Classic happened to fall on the Saturday after finals and we weren’t going to play a top team coming off of finals. If next year’s Classic isn’t the week after finals I expect us to have a tough opponent again.

by Ryan Rosenblatt on Dec 13, 2008 7:19 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Even though this was a step down in competition

There was still progress, which I didn’t quite expect with finals and everything this week. What I really liked was that we were able to keep our TOs down. Hopefully this is part of a long term trend that shows that we’re finally getting on top of that aspect of the game. Ben Howland teams take care of the ball.

by Tydides on Dec 13, 2008 9:06 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

good game

They played a graet game but off the game I have a question about the recuiting next year, yea I knowe we got alot of fowards coming in. But do think Big Ben is going to try to get Renardo Sidney from fairfax. Does anybuddy have any info?

by kyl57es on Dec 13, 2008 9:15 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

i doubt it

From the reports I have read about Sidney he doesn’t exactly seem like a CBH player. His father has at least one crazy quote each week (i.e. comparing Renardo to a Whopper) and his work ethic is suspect. I definitely could see Sidney either going to a lower tier school where he will be the man and get his numbers so he can be a one-and-done or end up at a certain school across town.

by bruinponcho on Dec 13, 2008 11:39 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

What's the difference

Between that school across town and a lower tier school?

by UCLA4Life on Dec 14, 2008 1:27 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Tuition

greg in denver - UCLA guy for life

by gbruin on Dec 14, 2008 7:16 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Not UCLA material IMO

Tons of talent but no desire.
Sidney = Derrick Character

by BlueReign on Dec 14, 2008 8:21 AM PST up reply actions 1 recs

Progress

It was good to watch our team attack the 2-3 zone better by finding the seams in the defense by dumping the ball into the high post. Obviously Depaul isn’t the best team to measure your offense against, but I feel like we are better today than we were a week ago and much better than we were at the start of the year which is all you really can ask for. Was it just me or did it seem like DC had a lot more than 5 assists? I thought he played a great game and was in complete control of the game when he was in there. I hope JH continues to be as aggressive in penetrating when we play teams with more talent as he has shown that he can do whatever he wants against second level teams but has yet to bring it in our tougher games. All in all, a good game and good progress was shown by all.

by bruinponcho on Dec 13, 2008 11:36 PM PST reply actions 0 recs