No Pressure

by Nestor on Feb 29, 2008 4:31 AM PST in Basketball

Considering the beat reporters were obsessing about JS all week, it’s not a surprise that red shirt Jr. is the top line item in today’s game reports. From Brian Dohn in DN:

Shipp broke his 0-for-20 slump from 3-point range on his first attempt, scoring the game's first points with his first trey of February. His next two 3-point attempts, though, were air balls, but he settled down and connected on 4 of 8 3-point attempts and scored 17points.

"I feel the same," Shipp said. "I knew they would start going in. You feel a lot better (with the makes), but you have to be confident and shoot the ball the same way."

Shipp also had career-high eight assists and did not turn the ball over in 36 minutes.

"I thought Josh had his best game of the year," UCLA coach Ben Howland said. "When you look at it, he had 17 points and accounted for another (eight baskets), so he accounted for half our points today, which is impressive."

JS finished the game with 8 assists, 4 rebounds, 3 steals, and 0 TOs in 36 mins. A great performance that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone here on BN. Even during his recent shooting slump (which he inevitably was going to get out of) JS was doing all the little things making his contributions to the team’s wins. Last night the shots started falling again leading him to put together one of his most complete performances of the season. Let’s hop JS keeps shooting (w/in the flow of the game) but more importantly keep doing all the other things that makes him a pivotal part of Howland’s machine.

On the topic of machine that brings us to KL, who notched his 17th double-double of the season (again from Dohn):

UCLA freshman center Kevin Love scored a game-high 18 points and had 12 rebounds for his 17th double-double of the season, and 10th in the past 12 games.

"They had to pick their poison," Love said. "If we were hitting shots and they were going to double- and triple-team me inside, it was going to leave (others) open. We knocked down threes and that was the game."

As good and multidimensional our offense was, apparently things weren’t going all so well in the first 10 mins of the game (which I missed). From the OC Register:

"I think the last 10 minutes of the game we really broke it down, but the first 10 minutes were pretty ugly," said freshman Kevin Love, who finished with 18 points, 12 rebounds and his 17th double-double.

"The bottom line is we didn't get it inside to the high post enough, or the low post, and we didn't do a good job of collapsing it and getting it back out," Coach Ben Howland said.

"Once we got things going, they never really got it back."

I will leave it up to those who watched those first 10 mins on whether or not our offense looked "ugly." Although I think we should also note that we beat a very good team yesterday that is well coached and can play pretty effective defense. So it shouldn’t be a total surprise if our team came out and had to go through a period of adjustment in the early going against a fired up team playing good defense.

The key was to hold the down fort on our end, and no surprise eventually it was our defense that jump started our offensive momentum:

As usual, the Bruins forged ahead with defense.

Because he was trying too hard to beat Mbah a Moute, Arizona State's James Harden missed a dunk with about 1:30 left in the half. Shipp followed the miss with a three-pointer -- a critical five-point turnaround, Howland said -- and then Collison ended the half with the three-pointer.

"Collison's three-pointer was huge for the momentum going into the halftime break," Howland said.

Bruins held the Devils to 40 percent shooting. They dominated them around glass outrebounding them by 33-19 (7 to 3 on the offensive end). And led by RW’s 4 steals they wrecked havoc in the ASU backcourt never letting their offense to get in rhythm. From Pucin’s round up again:

"Obviously their defense was excellent for 40 minutes," Arizona State Coach Herb Sendek said. "Very few things came easy for us offensively."

I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that our defensive tenacity is at a different level with LRMAM in the lineup. LRMAM only scored 3 points. However, he played as big a part in last night’s big win as JS, KL, DC and everyone else. He was guarding Harden most of the night and did a great job on the super frosh by holding him to 11 pts and never allowing him to get it going. Not to mention once again Luc’s presence allowed our guards to be so aggressive up front in putting on their lethal on ball pressure.

The only thing that bothered me a little last night was once we got our big lead in the second half we became a little too sloppy. We missed two gimmees on first breaks as RW missed a dunk in attempt to perhaps outdo his Cal/Oregon dunks, and we blew another 2 on 1 when JS tried to throw down a one handed rim rattler. You could tell Howland was a little flabbergasted in both of those sequences, and you could also tell RW must have gotten his message during the TOs when towards the end of the game he threw one down with any kind of extra flare (Donnie Mac noticed that as well).

Anyway moving on -- our guys should feel no pressure going into Sunday’s game against Zona. We accomplished last night what we needed to do in this road trip. The main goal from brutal Pac-10 road trips is to get at least a split. We got that. No matter what happens on Sunday they will be in control of their destiny with their last two regular season games at home.

All the pressure in the world is going to be on the Wildcats who are going to be fighting for their tourney lives. . So we just need to come out with the mentality of having nothing to lose and play our Ben Ball, which is control the boards, be patient on offense, and play our ferocious, attacking inside-the-jersey defense, which always leads to good results game after game. Just like Shipp who has been fairly unfazed while the traditional media around him has been engaging in obsessive, comical psycho analysis about his shooting slump … his fellow warriors should feel no pressure.

GO BRUINS.

Tweet Comment 11 comments | 0 recs |

Do you like this story?

Comments

sun devils defense

The sun devils played amazing defense during the first half of the game. Was that the entire reason we were missing shots? tough to say, however, what's most important is during the half CBH made the neccesary adjustments in his game plan to ensure the sundevils' defense wouldn't stand in the way...and we broke away with a large lead. We definitely did get sloppy during the 6 minutes in the second half when we went scoreless, that was by no means their defense wreaking havoc on us

by uCla on Feb 29, 2008 8:35 AM PST reply actions

Love has his head screwed on so straight

It's unbelievable for a freshman. The first 10 minutes were truly ugly (looked like the $C game almost)--great d by ASU and very average execution by the Bruins. They really figured it out in the end and DC was good for dagger after dagger.

It might be buried in another thread here (sorry just woke up) but what was up with Pendergraph? He's was pulling the Jeremy Shockey Special (ie. 1 catch, 6 yards = inconsequential) with his 4 points and ridiculous taunting.

by bruinhopeful on Feb 29, 2008 8:42 AM PST reply actions

When all is said and done

LRMAM will probably be my favorite Ben Ball Warrior. Why? Because while he hasn't/doesn't get the same attention as Farmar, AA, or KLove, he has made himself a key part of the team through outstanding defense.

by bruinbabe2000 on Feb 29, 2008 9:44 AM PST reply actions

The ugly part of the game

I didn't see it, so I can't say for sure. My guess though is that there were ten really talented and really well-coached athletes who were busting their rear ends working and hustling and all that. We were just a tad stronger, and worked the point of a wedge into a small crack and eventually broke them apart.

But I won't concede it was ugly, any more than I would concede any other well-played game is ugly because there isn't a lot of scoring.

We are a very non-ugly, a very pretty 25-3. I've seen all the top teams play. All are very good. But in my opinion, we have the prettiest team at the dance. Maybe I'm just a proud family member, but there really isn't anything ugly looking about this team to me. Nit-picking is allowed in the famly, of course, but I really have to wonder what's in the heads of the MSM morons who have to continually find some negative to talk about.

by Fox 71 on Feb 29, 2008 10:53 AM PST reply actions

The MSM sucks

Remember when they were whining about UCLA "winning ugly" when they beat Memphis. They acted like UCLA didn't deserve to be in the Final 4. I don't think the ensuing win over LSU was "ugly" according to their standards (hell, I thought the UCLA-Memphis game was beautiful).

by Raisin on Feb 29, 2008 11:17 AM PST up reply actions

When our defense is clicking

the other team has to work so hard to score points, even the chippies and free throws get tough. That's when things get "ugly" by MSM standards.

Whatever brings us a 'W' is all that matters.

"I just think, at the end of the day, UCLA is not a great job." Brian D'Oh!n, 12/07

by godblesstyus95 on Feb 29, 2008 12:49 PM PST up reply actions

Beauty is in the eye...

Everyone thinks the first 10 minutes was ugly because everyone wants offense.

Both teams were playing good defense and it looked like it was going to be like the USC game with beautiful scores in the 40's.

Then the Bruins went out and ruined it.

That first 10 minutes is why some media types never really like a BH coached team. But that 10 minutes is why they win. No matter how bad our offense might have looked, you could tell our defense wasn't going to let ASU get going.

Beautiful.

by mizzou on Feb 29, 2008 11:18 AM PST reply actions

Everyone here is misreading my "ugly"

remark. I love what the MSM perceives as "ugly" basketball because it is a mark of consistency and winning. It's like comparing the Suns to the Pistons in the Larry Brown era. Of course you pay the big bucks to see the free-flowing game, but it takes a full game's worth of defense to actually consistently win when it counts.

Now, with that being said, the first 1/4th of the game was in fact "ugly basketball" with many possessions going nowhere, a significant amount of uncalled contact below (which is really the root of all of this--the refs allowed the ASU zone to bang away at Love, but kept calling Keefe on the same actions), and a number of missed open opportunities.

Just because it isn't pretty doesn't mean I don't see the beauty in it.

by bruinhopeful on Feb 29, 2008 11:30 AM PST reply actions

The one thing about the sloppiness

is that it's just that - sloppiness. It's not becoming scared, or completely complacent.

It's almost as if we take our foot off the gas a little, but if a team starts to come back, we've proven able to gun it again. I can't remember any games other than at Stanford last year where we allowed a team to come back from a very large margin. The closest this year to my recollection was WSU, and that took one of the most stunning 3pt shooting barrages I've ever seen, and still fell 7 pts short.

Contrast that to the Miami vs. Duke game a week or two ago. Miami was up by around twenty midway through the second half, but started playing like they were the ones behind, running only 10-15 sec. off the clock each possession. Duke ended up falling short, but they did manage to make it a 1 pt. game.

So, I suppose what I'm saying is that our sloppiness is not the sloppiness of other teams. We have a rather superior brand of sloppiness that makes all other sloppiness seem downright sloppy.

by melliott2 on Feb 29, 2008 11:52 AM PST reply actions

Bruinhopeful = Beautiful

No offense meant in my last post - just a chance for me to show off my substandard writing skills.

I agree with your last post - there was beauty in that first 10 minutes.

by mizzou on Feb 29, 2008 1:17 PM PST reply actions

While

a split on the road is a great and exactly what you really aim for...I'd have to think there may be a little more added pressure just because its our last road trip of the year, everybody is just looking for a reason not to give us a top seed as march approaches.

I know Howland will have our players heads in the right place and we'll come out and take care of business as usual, but as a fan, I'd have to say splitting on the road this close to march would sting a little more than splitting earlier on.

Also as a fan we get the pride factor, we have to show those mildcats that what happened to them on our court was no fluke and not a result of the mildcats being "tired"...we gotta kick their asses on their own court sunday

go bruins

O.A.

by Ollie on Feb 29, 2008 3:37 PM PST reply actions