UCLA basketball dominates USA Today--today (Tuesday)

USA Today's biggest sport's story today is on UCLA basketball.  Entitled, "Rough chapter at storied UCLA," reporter David Leon Moore has a well sourced piece on what has gone wrong at least from the team's perspective.  The top of page one of the newspaper features a picture of Michael Roll with the caption, "It makes you feel terrible."  Tyler Honeycutt is quoted later in the article itself:  "I didn't expect this.  This has kind of set us in our place.  It let us know that we are not all that.  We have a lot to improve." The article identifies the usual list of culprits:  players leaving early; roll players like Roll (no pun intended by me but those were the terms used by USA Today) being thrust into a leadership position both on and off the court; injuries; and an arrest (Dragovich). 

But there was new information (at least to me).  Coach Howland expected Holiday to stay two years, not one, and was surprised when he left. 

Also there was new information on the injuries, again at least to me.  I didn't know that Honeycutt was out with a stress fracture of his back.  Reeves Nelson's picture, featuring his black eye, dominates the first page of the USA Today sports section.  Nelson's black eye, which he suffered during the Kansas game after he was poked in the eye, was still black 9 days later when we beat New Mexico State.  My view is the untold story are the seriousness of our injuries,  Jerime Anderson, speaking about injuries,  supports this view:  "Guys were in and out of the lineup so much.  We just haven't been able to put it together." 

Coach Howland was asked if has he talked to Coach Wooden about the frustrating turn of events.  Apparently not per Coach Howland:  "I don't think he has much experience going through what I am going through." You can see it all including Nelson's utterly ugly black eye at http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/mensbasketball/pac10/2009-12-28-ucla_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip.