UCLA Provides Glimmers Of Hope But Bruins Glaring Issues Haven't Gone Away

I was thoroughly frustrated with the beginning of the UCLA/CAL game and started taking notes of what was so upsetting until the late comeback. Despite an amazing OT win, a real important win for such a young team, I still had two MONSTER issues with this team and was wondering if anyone else agrees:
 
1. Howlands substitutions: Anderson was benched to start the game and Honeycutt and Lee at PG started the game off with energy we ha vent played with yet this year. Honeycutt was aggressive and strong and Lee set an up tempo aggressive pace for our offense. Then, all of the sudden, Anderson is in, Honeycutt disappears (pretty much for the rest of the game) and we slow down and the mess begins. Why does he always seem to make subs right when we are on a run? I think the subs are our biggest momentum killer, well actually second biggest next to…
 
2. Jerime Anderson is HORRIBLE. I know everyone is on Dragovitch this season for being a bum, but Jerime Anderson is MUCH MUCH worse. His pass that was deflected and luckily knocked out to Roll at the end of the game was an attempted NO LOOK PASS. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. He must have dribbled the ball off his leg or foot 20 times in the game and looks lost when trying to set the offense up, up top. Lee needs to take over at PG and Honeycutt needs more min as a result. Anderson stinks on D also. He is the weakest link of the team and you cant have that at your starting PG position and Howland HAS to realize this.

I’m really glad I’m not the only one who noticed the TH/LRMM comparisons. Both are extremely long and show a strange knack for being around the ball when it bounces off the glass.

I think the key to the entire game was the removal of Anderson from the starting lineup. He still plays extremely inconsistent but I think coming off the bench is a role that he is much better suited for. There are still tons of periods of time I found myself yelling at him for dribbling too much or picking up his dribble after two or three bounces. It was one extreme or the other.

But I wanted to re-iterate how great it was to see TH get some minutes. His rebounding and defense make us so much more dangerous of a team, especially on the defensive end. I like Anderson, but teams were not respecting his offensive game because he didn’t give them a reason to respect it. With TH running around and cleaning up on the glass, it leads to second shots (on a few different occasions that I remember in the 1H clearly) and TH also has the ability to finsh in traffic, something that Anderson just can’t do with his size.

Very happy with the win last night, but the only way that we continue to progress as a squad is if TH stays in the starting line-up, period. Anderson should only be playing in spurts to spell Roll or Lee, who are clearly our best wing players.

I’m sure Jerime is a very nice guy and works hard (I hope), but he is what has been dragging this team down. If Anderson had Randle as his assignment from the start of the game, I worry that we would have dug ourselves into a huge hole that we couldn’t have got out from. Having Lee at 6’5" at the top playing good defensive against opposing point guards will make a huge difference on the defensive end, as ball pressure is something so treasured by CBH (and rightfully so). No one was afraid of Anderson on the defensive end, but Lee’s length can give PG’s significant problems initiating the offense. Plus Lee seems to have much quicker feet than Anderson.

Ahh, for the days of Dick Enberg, an announcer I actually enjoyed. (It didn’t hurt that we won every game by a huge score.)

I only got to see bits and pieces of the game, but I thought our man defense was better than our zone. We seemed to allow a 15-foot jumper about every second or third pass. I’ll leave the decision on that to Coach Howland, but anyway that’s my vote.

I’m just taking things GAME by GAME with ZERO expectation.

LEARNING (mostly for Ben) is what this season means to me.

When I linked into the game last night, to my delight, the Bruins were in a 2-3 zone!
ZONE with occaisional man to man is well within our team’s ability.

The only little touch I’d add, is that whenever there’s a GUARD steal on defense…
there MUST be a duty to go coast to coast to the rack for the purpose of DRAWING silly fouls, and give us a shot at easy transition buckets and 3 point plays. THAT should be a HUGE part of our offense. Easy buckets helps makes jump shots fall (confidence).

Nestor’s previous post of Coach Wooden talking about his challenging season some 50 years ago was enough for me to call off the dogs, and give Ben, and this current roster of players ROOM and TIME to grow!

Go Bruins!

I think I agree with everything you say in your summary.

To elaborate on a few things:

1) Defensive recovery speed:
ND has absolutely no recovery speed defensively. If he gets caught out of position – or if the defensive scheme breaks down through miscommunication – he is out of the play. TH can get away with learning on the job, as he has the athleticism that gives him a comfort zone. BL, while still a little lost and not the most athletic guy in the world, does seem to have more ability than ND to recover from mistakes defensively (perhaps a hidden benefit of being fresh from limited minutes). Similarly, RN occasionally makes great athletic plays to make up for being in the wrong place. JMM, like ND, looks slow whenever he isn’t in exactly the right place.
I think one of the things that I most hope to see moving forward is for RN and TH, in particular, to start using their athleticism to bail out their teammates on the defensive end. We can’t make ND/MR into great athletic defenders, but as the team comes together I think there is room for defensive awareness to grow and for better team defense to mask some of the individual defense issues.
I know I sound like a broken record on LRMAM’s contribution to our Final Four defense, but he was a master of bailing out other players when there were defensive lapses. I really hope TH can play that role, as he looks like he has the raw athleticism and length to do so.

2) JA off the bench: as can be seen from the box score, the switch of TH and JA in the starting lineup did little to affect playing time from the previous game – 29 minutes for both JA and TH yesterday in game + OT, 24/25 mins each against UofA. What it DID do, though, was bring JA into the game fresh, to pick up where ML left off and to either put pressure on the opposing starter with his fresh legs, or to go at a bench player if the opposing starter was off the court. So, I think I like those matchups and first substitutions at the start of each half more than with JA starting and TH coming in. JA does not look good starting a game against a fresh opposing starter, but looked better coming off the bench (and looking like he had something to prove). I am not saying he is great – or even had a particularly good game – just that I think this rotation makes JA look better than if he starts.

At the same time, though, what do we make of ML’s performance as a starting PG? Is making him the primary defender, primary ball handler and (self-appointed?) primary scorer too much for him? For all the comparisons made to our recent greats, no one player was saddled with all three responsibilities. I think JA and TH both looked better last night than in the previous rotation, I just don’t know how much production we may lose from ML.

3) Easy baskets: we’re giving them up and we’re not getting many ourselves. Last night we managed to win by making a lot more 3s than they made, overcoming our horrendous FT shooting and lack of significant offense. In the first half, we played a few minutes of good offense at the start, moving the ball around crisply and finding people for high percentage shots; after that, we seemed to resort to long shots or allowing RN to try to battle 1-on-2 or 1-on-3 underneath the basket. We also failed to convert on fast breaks. At the same time, Cal was able to find a lot of holes on our defense inside, going up for layups or finding soft spots for short jumpers. Thankfully, when we started trying to cut things off inside and give them outside shots, they were ice cold from the outside. We can’t rely on going 7-9 from beyond the arc in the second half to win games. We need to find some more high percentage shots (which would include hitting free throws).

4) on a related point – I like it when MR and ND fake the outside shot and drive inside; I’m glad they don’t always settle for a contested outside shot, and they are the people who I would also like to see at the line shooting free throws. I think this is one of the areas MR has clearly stepped up from previous years; and I think getting some points inside is a way that ND can really develop into a more consistent scoring threat even when he is not on a hot streak from outside.

My friends and I went apeshit when Mike Roll hit that shot. We were making a bunch of noise and this Cal fan in front of us jumped up and berated is for making noise during Cal’s possessions.

God I love beating Cal. They were so pissed after the game.

from my (Cal grad) wife for the game. Whenever she watches, Cal loses. We were still behind, she sat down for a few minutes, the Bruins go ahead, she mutters an expletive and leaves the room. ;-)

I am going with the “huge” win approach here. Not that I don’t appreciate the “this guy can’t play,” or “that dude is a disaster” or “CBH’s thought processes are deeply troubling” line of analysis, because BN would not be BN without them. I also think the historical references to players we no longer have are somewhat helpful. However, all those guys that can’t play, did play, and, together, each contributing what he could, they put us in the position where our last offensive possession mattered. A lucky bounce and a basket off a loose ball wouldn’t have been worth much discussion if we had been 8 or 10 points down at that point. Personally, I liked ‘em all, because they are the players we have, and they are the players we are going to continue to have, and it says “UCLA” on their unis. Of course, every game is going to be an adventure. Some, like last week’s impotent performance against U of A, will border on the disastrous, though we did come back a little. Some will be unexpected wins, as we have seen. I have no idea how we’ll do against Stanford. I am pretty sure that Drago will be back from the Twilight Zone, but who knows? And maybe TH and MR will up their point production. We have no idea, do we? So hang on, there’ll be a lot of stories unfolding.

ft’s again almost cost us a game, but the positive i take away was that only rn was missing. the rest of the team combined for 2 missed ft’s, but maybe it was a lack of opportunities either way it was good that not everyone was clanking away. now as far as RN’s free throw woes, it seems pretty correctable. he has a nice stroke (unlike mata or the prez before his senior yr) and i think he was a pretty good shooter overall in hs. all his misses seem to miss long. from what i hear the best way to shoot em is to focus on one of 2 spots, lip of the rim and back of the rim. i wonder what his focus point is and wonder if altering this would help.

more th = more better for us, me thinks.

michael rol made huge plays and seem to wake up from a shooting slump. but he seems to be at the scene of the crime for a lot of bone head plays, like he tunes out or loses focus. kinda troubling for a supposed heady player. but i give him his due, without his shots we lose yesterday, but same can be said for JA and ND.

as far as the sophomores not making the jump in physical development. one explanation could be the plague of nagging injuries most had. JA, bobo, ML all were hurt at some point. kinda hard to get bigger and faster when you;re trying to heal. throw in honeycutt and we’re behind in the game. unfortunately it shows.

1. We do have a monster, RN. He is just not in a monster in the position he is playing currently.
2. There was progress with this game. For maybe the first time this year, we tightened up the defense and eliminated the stupid turnovers in the second half. Got better in the zone as the game wore on and adjusted to the exploitation of ND. The fact we were able to make adjustments is big to me.
3. RN had been improving his free throws…the CAL game was a step back but he will get a lot better over time.
4. The most maddening thing about this team is not the physical lapses. The physical skills are the physical skills for this year (hit the weights boys). But the stupid, stupid plays that generated turnovers were the killer in the first half. We eliminate those and we become an OK team. Add real intensity in and we can win some games.
5. We are going to have dry shooting spells, long and ugly, over the course of the season as we did in the first half. The question is whether we can battle through them. I think there was some character shown by the team, maybe for the first time this year, to stay close despite the ugly shooting and stupid turnovers in the first half.

Did not think we could win at CAL (maybe you are wearing down my biased optimism Nestor). Dont think we can beat Stanford. As a fan, hoping I am wrong again!

The Utah Jazz Coach Frank Layden famously said on why he drafted 7’4"Mark Eaton despite the fact Eaton had barely played while he was at UCLA:“You can teach height.” Eaton went on to have a solid NBA and become the career leader in blocks for game. People often forget the second part of Layden’s quote which was: “I can teach him to play basketball.”

Bobo is not only tall he is relatively solid. Unlike say Mike Lanier, he can also run and looks relatively agile. He has the physical makings of a good center.

And Bobo has shown flashes of ability. Ironically on offense he gets into position well. He just needs to learn to finish. He has shown some shot blocking ability. His relative quickness, size, and shot blocking ability would help our defense as once you blow by JA (as in AZ) it would be nice to have a shot blocker ready.

However, Bobo is soft. He gets a rebound once every six minutes compared to TH’s once every 3.7 minutes (CBH cited this in starting TH) or once every 3.8 minutes for RN. This is in part because Bobo does not body up or box out well.

A zone is even harder to rebound in for that reason (you have to find someone to box out) and Morgan’s softness would lead to more second chance points.

That said, I like playing Morgan for a few minutes in the first half of each game. It saves RN a foul and he is a change of pace, a true shot blogger with size. A big post player.

Lastly, Bobo is the anti-ML in that he needs to get out of control some and play with more aggression. Those rebounds should be his. He is just too soft to be rely upon. If that changes, could be good.