Ugly Bruins: Another Unfocused Effort For UCLA Basketball

Look over cross town…SUC really has a team with mediocre talent. However, with an addition of one competent point guard, they seem like a 1op 25 team…this is with a new coach! Our guards are not natural ball handlers, leaders, game managers. The turnovers are almost always initiated by the point guards: poor passes, inability to read defenses, poor decisions with the ball, driving in and not knowing what to do when defense closes in.

I’m going to have to say it again. I put the blame on CBH only because his staff failed at evaluating talent. It is impossible to coach a player like JA or even ML to be as good as Chris Paul or even a level headed DC. It’s a gift and our guards don’t have it and no matter what coach we have, it will not happen. We just have to be better at choosing our recruits when it comes to our point guards.

I had commented earlier on the Cal game (I think) that one of the positives was Bobo playing the hedge perfectly on one defensive series. We still gave up a basket, but it wasn’t his fault…

But I think your point is absolutely valid.

Warning: This is a long post. Skip the history lesson and go to the bottom if you want, but the history points make good discussion to the question.

I touched on this in another thread, but your Aaron Gray example has got me thinking again.

We’ve already touched on the fact that Coach Howland’s reputation in college basketball so far has been one of a builder. He built Northern Arizona up and left after his 5th year. He built Pitt up and left after his 5th year. Now, he is on his 7th season at UCLA, which is uncharted territory for him.

The question now isn’t whether he can build a program – we saw that he could with 3 consecutive Final Fours – but whether he can maintain it and develop it. And this period is particularly of interest, because it will give a lot of insight into his team philosophy that we have yet to see.

What I mean by this is that prior to this, both at the other 2 schools and here at UCLA, his 5th year coincides with his first season where all the possible players (barring redshirts) are his recruits.

Starting last year, and in particular this year, we’ve begun to wonder about CBH’s substitution patterns, and if indeed, this is a part of his coaching philosophy. A lot of the attention in particular is on Dragovic, but also on Keefe, in which we see older players getting a lot of play time at the expense of younger, less experienced but possibly more talented players, despite the numerous deficiencies in the upper classmen’s game.

History lesson starts here
To illustrate this, let’s take a look back at history. Entering the 2004-05 season, Howland brought in his first class, and finally had players that he could call his. Given how bare in talent the team was due to the prior lack of a coach, it was understandable that Howland gave the starting jobs to his class, which also had much more talent.

That year, as freshmen, Farmar and Afflalo started 29 of 29 games, and Shipp stated 23 of 29 games. As a freshman, Mata-Real saw action in 21 of 29 games, and played 9.7 minutes per game. Of course, Bozeman was also injured for the season, which might have changed these numbers up a bit, but from all reports, Farmar was more than talented enough to have taken the job outright from the start.

Now going into the 2005-2006 season, we see Howland with 2 classes under his belt, now including DC, LRMAM, MR and PAA. Again, with a lack of talent in the upper classmen, it was easy for the newcomers to get big minutes. As we remember Josh Shipp was injured early and out for the season after just 4 starts, but Bozeman was healthy and 30 of the 31 games he played in. With a lack of a player that can fit the 4, LRMAM, as also the most talented of those players eligible to play the 4, saw himself in the starting rotation from the get-go.

What’s important to take from this season that we all remember, but many forget, is how involved our freshmen and sophomores were involved. We saw DC even get 2 starts when Farmar was out, and DC averaged 19.2 minutes per game in all 39 games that season. Roll even got 5 starts, PAA got 2, and yes, even Ryan Wright saw 4 starts. Yes, the Ryan Wright that saw even 9.8 minutes per game in the 31 games he saw action in – and his minutes per game actually peaked during conference play, slowly tapering off with postseason play understandably.

Sure non-conference schedule and blowouts will skew the numbers for certain players, and towards the end of the season we narrowed the rotation down to a few players, but it’s still amazing to see that by the end of the season, the entire team rotation was mainly freshmen and sophomores, with Hollins and Bozeman our only upper classmen getting any significant playtime.

Now let’s move forward another year – 2006-2007. With Hollins and Bozeman graduating (as well as other seniors), and Farmar jumping to the NBA, we brought in Westbrook, Keefe, Dragovic.

What’s interesting to see is that at this point, most of the players were Howland’s own, and indeed the same starting 5 started every game all season: AA, DC, LRMAM, LMR, and JS, with the exception of MR, RW, and PAA getting one start each during the entire season. As we all recall, we made it to the FF that year, despite a seeming lack of depth all year.

Part of why we all saw RW explode “out of nowhere” the next year was because we barely saw him at all his freshman year – he only got 9 minutes per game, although he appeared in every game. He was of course very raw then as well, and in his first and only start of the season, DC was out and we had that disastrous 1-11 shooting game against WVU (though we forget that he also got 5 rebounds, and 4 assists on the road as a freshman against an experienced Beilein team, something we can never seem to beat).

Interestingly enough, as a freshman, we see that Keefe got 6.8 minutes per game in 32/36 games that year. Dragovic appeared in only 6 games that season, getting 4.3 minutes. Ryan Wright, now a second year, saw his play time actually decrease to just 28/36 games at 5.4 minutes per game, which is probably why he decided to leave the team after this season. The vast vast majority of post minutes went to LMR and PAA, with LRMAM filling in as well.

Despite having essentially just a 7-man rotation with little post play, we beat KU to go to the FF, where our lack of depth burned us once AA was given those quick fouls early against Florida and we never recovered.

Now the next year comes in, and we see Wright transfer and Afflalo jump to the NBA. We also bring in uber-frosh KLove as well as Stanback. So Westbrook fills right into for Afflalo, starting in 34/39 games that season. However, we forget a few things that transpired ealry in the season: Michael Roll was injured at only saw 6 total games in the middle of December, after missing the start of the season, before he went out and red shirted.

Why is this interesting? Because we may never know if Roll, being more experienced than Westbrook, might have taken more play time early on from RW. Many people, CBH included, were surprised to see how quickly RW exploded onto the scene – but how much of it was the fact that we simply had no one else to fill and RW got the chance? Would we have seen a similar situation where a less talented but more experienced upper classman got play time over a more talented but inexperienced younger player, as we’ve seen this year? Well, obviously we will never get to find out for that year, and RW more than earned his spot as a starter in the rotation permanently.

Interesting notes on this season, Keefe moved up to 11.7 minutes per game after missing numerous games due to injury. Dragovic saw 9.2 mpg in 25 games, thankfully most of them being early in the season. Stanback only saw 25 games, and went from 10+ minutes per game in non-conference down to just 5.8 minutes per game by the end of the season, meaning he saw even less time. At that time, we all thought… well it’s obviously a lot of that is due to non-conference blowouts vs. tight conference games.

Now where does all this lead to? Well, Love came in and while he got to start basically off the bat, we saw early on that he got pulled often for LMR for defensive shortcomings and for looking like he was out of shape early on. However, Love, who has a great basketball IQ, quickly learned the system – and quite frankly, his skills on offense and on the boards more than overcame any defensive deficiencies he had.

Now why is this an interesting point? As Penny2i wrote about Aaron Gray, there are players that might not have fit in with Howland’s style of defense and what was required – but the question I wonder is, does occasionally missing a hedge, or an assignment, mean that that player needs to be pulled despite everything else he brings to the table?

To those familiar to baseball, they will understand this question easily: does the overall sum of the player warrant play time on the field over the deficiencies they may have? Manny Ramirez has a truly amazing all-time bat, but is an absolute butcher in the field and has issues off the field, but during his career, managers played him because his bat trumped all those other issues. Likewise, Ozzie Smith was a wizard with the glove and never had much of a bat, but his defensive prowess made up for his shortcomings on offense and he saw himself a Hall of Fame career.

Now those are extreme cases, but they apply to basketball as well. KLove, despite his defensive shortcomings (particularly early on in the season), was in a whole ’nother world with scoring, passing and rebounding and CBH would have been clinically insane to not play him over missing a hedge or defensive lapses. Likewise, LMR and PAA (til his senior year) were no threat on offense, but their defensive skill meant big play time.

End history lesson-

This question has two parts. First is, what do we do about players in the “gray zone” – that zone where they might not be such all-stars on one end of the ball, but might have an overall package good enough to play. And the second part is, should these players be getting more play time to build experience over upper classmen who aren’t doing that much better.

Some prime examples: does Dragovic’s offense (debate-able that he even has a good one) trump his lackadaisical play on defense? Does Bobo missing a hedge or being raw on offense trump his size and shot blocking ability, particularly during the zone? Does Lane’s defensive shortcomings trump his offense or the benefit of learning as a freshman?

Looking back during our FF years, we were always under the impression that Howland was willing to play freshman and other underclassmen over upper classmen based on defensive skill.

These past two seasons have thrown a wrench into that theory. Looking back, I can also see another theory being valid. That Howland played the underclassmen when he had no other choice – when the upperclassmen are utterly devoid of talent (04-06), when there are injuries or vacancies (LRMAM taking the 4 spot his freshman year, RW subbing for DC his first year, RW sliding right in to AA’s spot), or when the underclassmen’s talent is just too obvious to ignore (Love over LMR for example, RW if MR were competing for the starting spot which never happened). When those things worked out in the past, we never questioned it because it was simply never an issue.

Now? Seeing Dragovic get 30 minutes a game over underclassmen who may not be as experienced, but may be giving more effort is throwing everything I’ve thought into a funk. For that matter, seeing at the history of how Howland was once willing to give freshmen significant play time off the bench (for crying out loud, Ryan Wright got nearly 10 mins per game in his freshman year, but somehow Bobo can’t even get 8 in his sophomore year?) What’s are they doing different or has something changed?

I am a firm believer that first-hand experience is the best teacher, and from what I’ve seen so far, most of the young players seem to relish the play time they do get on the court, but all too quickly they get yanked over one thing, whereas upper classmen can do a hack job and keep getting play time (Dragovic and Shipp last year).

It was easy to dismiss the transfers of players like Wright and Stanback as guys who didn’t want to learn the Howland method of defense, or didn’t want to wait to earn play time, but if asked about why now, I’m not sure I can answer that’s 100% the case – especially as I continue to see young players get yanked quickly while the older guys play awfully.

The year is still young, and we still have next year, but I’m definitely going to pay more attention to Howland’s substitution patterns, play time distribution, and see where his philosophy on player development lies. Does he reward his own recruits play time based on seniority? Does it take obvious amazing talent to overcome it? What to him is his “best unit” on the floor?

Because now is the first time in Coach Howland’s career that he is no longer just building a program – but now he has to retain players and manage issues such as seniority vs. youth talent, experience vs. inexperienced, and these will be some telling years.