Good Analysis Nestor. This game was definitely a heart stopper typical of our usual second round game. I was very close to a heart attach during the last few minutes of the game.
All year long I have been saying if JH is able to play to close to his potential ability, we become a very tough team to beat. We need him to play like he did on Saturday to advance. Sometimes I wonder if CBH read the posts on BN, he would play JH more often at the point to back up DC! Oh well..

This season has been the first since Ben Howland assumed command of the program that has disappointed me and NOT been fun to watch. Our team has been very inconsistent, both in terms of effort and execution. I have also been very disappointed in the lack of development and contribution from what was a highly touted freshman class. If I didn’t trust the coach, I’d assume these guys - who are otherwise good kids and fine representatives of the university - belong at some lame Mountain West school.

Knowing all of this, I didn’t expect much last night, so I have to say I was pleasantly surprised that we A) won, and B) played lock-down D on the final possession to force a future NBA guard into a tough shot that he missed with a hand in his face as he slightly fell away from the basket. The Defensive scheme was well designed and perfectly executed. Our defensive overall was great. What hurt us and allowed their guards to hit big shots down the stretch was foul trouble — DC and JH played great defense, but were hampered down the stretch by the fact that they came perilously close to fouling out. Maynor didn’t start hitting until DC and then JH started playing off of him to avoid fouls. We also limited Sanders’ effectiveness at the offensive end, despite the fact that we don’t have a true post player, let alone a dominant post player. Given that DG was out because of an injury, not a bad feet.

Our achilles heel, I think was not a lack of effort, but a total lack of offensive execution. Turnovers, missed layups, an offense that looked as harassed by VCU as it was, was why this game went down to the wire. I think Coach Howland is to blame for much of this — he hasn’t used JH properly (JH is clearly more comfortable as a 1 guard — when he played the one he made up for all of the mistakes in this game he made as the 2). Additionally, Jerime Anderson was worthless on offense, and I’ve got to wonder why that is at this point in the season. Finally, let me add to the chorus of those who wonder why ML wasn’t brought in to help on D. Howland in my opinion takes the blame for our team’s lack of chemistry and lack of dependable depth.

I have been more critical of this year’s team than most, I think. But, having just laid out my issues with last night’s game, let me just say I think that we should feel good about last night’s win. We won in a hostile environment against a pretty good team with nothing to lose in the NCAA tournament, where crazy sh*t happens all the time. Memphis barely beat CSUN (I’m sure Lavin was somewhere claiming he picked CSUN to beat the Tigers in his bracket), American had ‘Nova on the ropes, and so on. Last night, we found a way to win, as opposed to finding a way to lose like we did early this year against Michigan, ASU and WSU. That’s the name of the game in the NCAA tourney.

Nestor, I agree with your main points — ML should have been played more, particularly given the foul trouble, JH plays better at the point, CBH can be stubborn, etc.

VCU played an excellent game. IMHO they would have beat a lot of the 5 seeds in that venue, under those circumstances. Personally, I think that the experience of WINNING IN THE CLUTCH with defense will serve us very well as we progress through the Tourney…I unfortunately don’t think we’ll have the luxury of being able to close out games by being 10 pts+ up late in the second half from here, if this is the start of the return of our game-end mojo it will be very worth it.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief when Maynor missed that last shot. Great win for our Bruins, but there were many moments last night that left me yelling at the screen. For some reason, our offense just doesn’t look crisp. We look like a championship caliber team when we create turnovers and score in transition. But, when we’re forced to enter a half-court offense against a zone, we just didn’t execute. I couldn’t count how many times the ball was in DC or JH’s hands with the shot clock winding down, leading to a drive to the basket into double or even triple coverage, and throwing up a missed shot. I mean, that can’t be a designed play, can it? I’ve seen that same situation time and time again throughout the year. And it always seems to come when the opposing team is mounting a huge comeback. I hope we can dig deep tomorrow and have better production from our half-court set.

One could see a lot of “active nerves” last night. Missed layups at point blank range. Missed catches in the paint. Missed passes in the breaks. Missed rotations off of double-teams. Missed opportunities all around.

And yet, at the same time, these were sins of action, not necessarily inaction. Our guys may have been feeling the pressure on them from everyone in the free world outside of BN, and tried to overcompensate with hyperactivity and unfocused urgency. With that out of the way, maybe NOW the Bruins can be cleaner on execution without the anxiety and nerves of the opener.

There were SO many positives mixed in with the frustration last night. We ALL felt the latter, and should remember the former.

Think of it this way: if someone had told you BEFORE THE GAME that…

… PAA would play 37 minutes and score double-figures…

… JS would pull down 16 and 8…

… Nikola would pull down THIRTEEN REBOUNDS…

… JH would have a 13 and 6 assist game…

… all starters would score in double figures, and…

… the team would go 17-19 at the line…

… AND we’d win, would you take it???

N is right in saying this felt like one of our 2nd-round nail-biters than our usual 1st round runaways.

So what do we do?

— We thank heaven we have a video/ scouting staff that probably got our assistant coaches 8-10 games of Nova before they got on the plane (and probably gave them 8-10 games of American, too, just in case), so we don’t have to lose time FINDING footage, just like the article this week that said we had a 2-1/2 day head start on such things.

— We trust that CBH and the benchers will learn from today, and have actually a well-rested Drew Gordon and Malcolm Lee ready for playing time, to confront the guard-heavy Nova squad, thus restoring our ptoentially outstanding depth.

— We look at JA and realize this frosh just got his feet wet, so some of the pressure HAS to be off.

— We look to our senior trinity of DC, JS and PAA, along with key reserves Roll and Keefe, and realize that this core group of 5, while they may be tired, have the skill, savvy, and familiarity with CBH’s Tourney between-game-coaching style to absorb new knowledge and schemes on the fly .

— We become encouraged that ND stepped up against a pro-size center and — bless you, Drago — pulled down a career-high THIRTEEN boards in a pressure situation.

— We take heart that DC tried his best to challenge the same NBA-size center and DROVE to the basket, rather than shrink from the challenge, even if a dish-off or two were fumbled, or got blocked in the waning moments.

— We gaze eyes wide-open at watching JH move into a double-point role, and respond with steady, unhurried drives for scores or dimes in the paint.

“It’s about how hard you can GET hit, and KEEP MOVING FORWARD.”

Learn from yesterday, Bruins, and KEEP. MOVING. FORWARD.

M

all the BenBall warriors against Nova. For one thing, CBH has already alluded to “matchup problems.” For another, Villanova has a guard-heavy line-up. Also, they ran a 1-2-1-1 full court zone press against American, then a switching man-to-man. They have good size. On offense, they attack off the dribble a lot. So they will require a lot of energy from the Bruins. On the plus side, matchup problems cut both ways, and we have a bench. Certainly there is no reason to hold anything back. By the way, we can beat Villanova.

Suddenly the douchebags over at that network have it that UCLA survived the upset bid from VCU. Wait a minute, I thought they all announced that VCU would clearly win this game?

When we think of villanova, we’re used to thinking of 3 or 4 guards with 1 taller player. This Villanova team bucks that trend and I’m pretty sure they have the more traditional team. If not, they play at most 3 guards.

Nova is led by Scottie Reynolds (of course) who seems to be a bigger and stronger guard, and their other main threat is Dante Cunningham who I want to say is their center. The Cunningham guy impressed me and I think his matchup with Aboya will be the key to the game.

To me, this game is a lot like the Cal team from 3 years ago where they have a good mix of guard play, low post, and a decent 3 pt threat. I would say Reynolds is probably a lot like Ubaka from the Cal team 3 years ago, and Cunningham should be a lot like Leon Powe. I don’t remember who their 3-pt threat is, but I do remember them hitting a few. With that said, they’re probably a lot more athletic than that Cal team from 3 years ago also.

That’s all I really remember.

when I started posting here during DDD (dark days of dorrell), Nestor and I agreed on almost nothing. Now, this basketball season we are totally sympatico.

I think CBH is a great coach. I also think he has OCD or some other repitiion complusion thing going on because he simply will not change. He does the same thing over and over again.

Why was Malcolm Lee not on the floor? There is not a good answer. Why did we not play Jrue at the 1 and Lee at the 2 to see how they would perform? again don’t know.

What we do know is we went into our prevent offense with 5 minutes left, and it did what it always does, gets us about 4 points. And allows the other team to score at least 8. We should have had Jrue at the 1 in the last 5 minutes and continued playing aggressive on offense instead of the hold the ball for 20 seconds at the top of the key and try to run out the clock

“This is like my sixth or seventh concussion,” Gordon said. “I would say I’m 75, 80 percent for Saturday.”

I really hope he’s exaggerating. Having more than one concussion is a serious deal. I’m not talking about his playing ability here, I’m talking about his health. Anyone know anything else about past concussions of his?

that Coach Howland needs our help. For example, it has been my opinion for quite a while now, that we should play zone from time to time. If I were coaching the Bruins, we would. But there is no chance of that, so we will have to limp along under that stubborn old fool’s leadership. Just think, if we had speeded up the offense against VCU, taken more shots, Maynor would have had more opportunities to score against us, or get fouled and score with the clock stopped. Collison could have been sent to the bench with 5 fouls, but who needs him? In comes the Wunderkind to shut Maynor down, JH goes wild and scores at will, and we win going away. Victory cigars all round. Howland resigns in shame at having been exposed as a lucky fraud, and the Bruins, free at last, go on to win the national championship, averaging 102 points a game. What a wonderful thing imagination is.

What about the other center, the guy from Dallas? He hasn’t seen the floor in a long time, but with DG hurt, rotate JMM in and see what happens. He is tall, can raise his hands and create a block of some sort on defense, and does like to go to the basket on offense. With other contributors on the bench, it might be worth the risk. I hope he comes back next year and explains why he has been so invisible…
Bill

With the notion that the Bruins were “playing not to lose” at the end of the game last night. The last offensive possession, yeah not so great. But prior to that, they attacked the basket on pretty much every possession in the last 4 minutes, which is exactly what they should do in that situation. Sanders made 2 or 3 great plays on clean blocks, Holliday left one layup a little short, JS and AA got fouled and made 4 clutch FTs, which ultimately helped preserve the win, and the refs swallowed the whistle on 2 or 3 obvious disqualification fouls on Sanders, which led to a transition 3 and a foul and 2 FTs for VCU. So I see it as a case of the Bruins doing nearly everything they should have and ultimately battling through adversity for precious tourney road win against a tough team in a situation where a less disciplined team would have gone down. It may have been hard to watch, but I don’t know there was a lot they could have improved tactically.

Also, about playing the second team guards – Howland did try and get them some time with about 10-12 minutes left when we extended the lead to 11, but Maynor responded with a bucket, and an assist with a foul for a 3 point play in about 30 seconds, so Coach – I think quite reasonably – brought JS, AA and DC back immediately. I don’t think anybody would have been happy with the coaching if the Bruins were beaten by a run that happened with our 3 triple-final four seasoned seniors on the bench. For better or worse, we’re going to be riding those guys as far as they can take us, and they’ve more than earned that opportunity.

Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports had this to say about the last play of last night’s game:

The historic highlights are always about buzzer beaters – the final-second shots made courtesy of superior play. And that’s fine.

Thursday night though, UCLA’s Darren Collison delivered the defensive equivalent, making the play that won the Bruins their first-round game over VCU, 65-64 in the East Region.

Collison guarded VCU’s devastatingly quick guard, Eric Maynor, who just two years ago scorched the Duke backcourt for a game-winning jumper.

With Maynor looking to duplicate another game-winner over an all-time program, Collison cut off the lane, made Maynor pick up his dribble and then refused to fall for a foul-drawing pump fake. With a hand in his face, Maynor was forced into a disjointed 17-foot jumper that fell harmlessly short.

Anything less out of Collison and Maynor probably scores, UCLA loses and the shot is remembered forever.

Nobody wants to watch highlights of a guy playing defense. The video of Collison on Maynor won’t be a Pontiac Game Changer or be immortalized in future commercials. It won’t be toasted in Westwood the way, say, Tyus Edney streaking the length of court, still is.

This was the game-winning play though. And it spared the Bruins from being on the wrong end of the replay.

This is the reason UCLA is back to powerhouse status, seeking its fourth consecutive Final Four. Ben Howland is a great defensive coach and quite often that’s where the game is really won. Thursday, his star player proved it in the biggest moment of the game.