UCLA Basketball, What's Up With The Frontline?
by DCBruins on Dec 7, 2010 8:15 AM PST
in Basketball
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PrintWith Sunday's shocking loss to Montana, UCLA now has a losing record this season and Ben Howland is now 17-22 in his last two seasons. Excuses have been made for the Montana loss ranging from staying up too late, depression over SUC, finals, let down from Kansas, etc. The best summation may be simply what CBH said:
"It's early but it's a bad loss, there's no question," UCLA coach Ben Howland said. "The effort was just very, very weak. We have to regroup."
But more important than the Montana game were some of the larger trends. This is the comment that worries me the most.
It could be argued that at least for one night, Montana had better players at the center, power forward and point guard spots after Brian Qvale, Derek Selvig and Will Cherry pretty much had their way with Bruins counterparts Brendan Lane, Reeves Nelson and Lazeric Jones.
"Those three [Montana] guys definitely outplayed ours at those three positions," Howland said.
Let's take them one at a time
1. Center. Brendan Lane is not a Center. He is doing his best to play out of position . He is actually a good help defender as shown by the fact he is leading UCLA in block shots. However, one on one he may not still be strong enough on a big center.
The stranger case is Joshua Smith. He has his best games against Villanova, Pepperdine and Kansas. He has his worst against Pacific and Montana. It is more than he plays better against the best teams. It may also be Pacific and Montana had big players and played a zone. He can beat athletic big guys as he showed against the Kansas twins but against a double team of tall players, he is having problems. This will be interesting to see how this develops but Smith is young and had his minutes limited.
2. Point Guard. Jones and Anderson have been beaten by about everyone at this point. Anderson is better this year on defense because he tries (unlike last year) but he is not good. This is not new. Westmont, in the Exhibition game, was beating our PGs off the dribble. There may be a solution of sorts here.
Howland said he regretted not having junior guard Malcolm Lee defend the super-quick Cherry, who repeatedly burned the Bruins off the dribble on the way to a game-high 18 points.
There is the larger issue that CBH needs to recruit a PG but for now this may be the solution on Defense. Lee played PG M2M some last year with success.
3. Power Forward. This is the biggest concern. What the heck has happen to Reeves Nelson? Since the first half of the Pacific game he has not been able to make a layup consistently. In that Pacific game it was Reeves Nelson single handly who beat Pacific's zone scoring 8 of the first 12 points. These were all inside shots where he started close to the basket. This was also the last game where we got off to a great start.
Thus, CBH had the solution to Montana's zone: to start the second half against Montana, UCLA pounded the ball into Reeves and he missed. I guess it should not be a surprise as his first shot in the game was blocked. But in the larger sense what is going on with Reeves? He dominated Pacific and earlier games and now someone is writing on the threads he looks like he has mono.
In the last four games --all losses-- Reeves has shot 50% or less each game. Last season Reeves shot 50% or less 6 times total! Part of this may be explained by Reeves playing a different position (Reeves was the designated press breaker against Villanova and against Kansas he was up top a lot making entry passes.) But against VCU and Montana he was down low in the block where he was the second best % shooter in the PAC 10 last year as an undersized Center. (And no offense to VCU and Montana but the PAC 10 does have some decent Centers probably better than VCU or Montana.)
Many have been critical of Reeves defensive effort. But until recently, the only question on offense was his passing. He has exceed there leading UCLA in assists in multiple games. But he is missing close range layups. Yes, they are contested but these are shots Reeves makes. Reeves needs to be able to make things happen in the zone and to get transition layups.
UCLA is going to get outplayed at PG, thus our bigs have to outplay the other teams bigs to have a chance. Smith is improving but Reeves is a matter for major concern right now.
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Problem is, losing is not painful to this team.
Contrast the teams of Afflalo and Farmar, where they would take a loss personally and would hurt over it. This team is like, losing is expected and winning is a surprise.
How much of that killer instinct is self selecting?
Afflalo and Farmar and all that group were recruited when the Bruins were wallowing in the oil slick’s trail. They HAD to have a chip on their shoulder coming to UCLA. In contrast, the Lee/Anderson #1 class came to a winner. Is there a difference? Not that this team has no fire, they are clearly light years better than last year. RN has it, but seems easily frustrated at times. You can see that Zeke has attitude, but he still looks raw (though he seems to at least be angry when something goes wrong).
Who will step up and fight like the Bruin greats of just a few years ago? TH has the talent, ML is playing excellent D, and so is TL, but someone needs to be the leader. I think that is what is most missing on this team.
The Reeves problem is perplexing
My own far fetched theory is that Reeves has his preferred spots on the floor, as a lot of players seem to have, and with him playing farther from the basket, he doesn’t find himself with the ball in a position he’s comfortable with. Some guys have much greater success the fewer moves they have to make with the ball, like Smith, and maybe Reeves is like that too.
That's what I thought BUT
And it fits for Kansas and Villanova but as much for VCU or Montana. Against Montana he had his back to the basket and was fed in the post. The exact same as Pacific and last year. And he missed again and again. I am perplexed as well.
Yeah I just don't really know what's going on
I guess I’m throwing up the only plausible things I can think of because I don’t want to think that he is regressing, because that would mean big trouble for the rest of the season.
I read....
Reeves is suffering from a hip flexor. Could this be his problem?
Is it just me?
Or is BH starting to sound like the FB HC?
That's what ALL coaches sound like
when they lose and things don’t go their way.
But hey, what do I know. I’m just the 800 lbs bruin in the room.
"...but against a double team of tall players, he is having problems."
Hmmm, seems like there are a couple of guys named Travis and David that Smith could practice against if he’s having trouble with a double team of tall players.
Yes and No
It undoubtedly helps Smith one on one. CBH should have those two playing zone some as well. It may hurt the Wears short term but will help Smith.
I think Smith will be better at this by the end of the season. I am not as worried about this BUT CBH better be ready for all the mid-majors to play a zone that collapses on Smith.
BL as a center
I’ve been keeping + / – numbers for all the different lineups CBH has used, and to this point lineups featuring BL as a center have been about 3X worse than lineups featuring BL at the power forward spot. Also, these are adjusted numbers that account for the competition.
Thanks again for that
Your lineup +/- was fascinating. I never thought of doing that. It does seem to bear it out BL’s troubles at center. I think Smith is the answer there though. The bigger problem is Nelson.
RN is the only surprise
Brendan Lane is a slender 4 who has only adequate quickness. Bigger stronger 4’s will dominate him. He’s just not that good of a player yet.
Joshua Smith is a ponderous big man. He plays on the ground, which allows him to dominate smaller players. Against Montana, they could stay on the floor and challenge his shot. He will develop quicker post moves in time. Most teams won’t have taller centers and his height and girth will have their effects. I am not too worried about him.
RN is a bull in a china shop. He probably leads the world in blocked shots – meaning his shot gets blocked. Last year, he was able to get around bigger players with his quickness. At the 4, he is playing against players with equal quickness and is being met at the rim by two players. I’d like to see him pump fake at the basket and draw fouls. I’d like to see him take one more dribble to the basket so that he is attacking the rim, and not releasing the ball at rim height. Then, instead of just getting shots blocked, his wild shots will be attempts at three point plays.
As a team, we need to take care of the ball on offense. Post players have to screen their players so they can’t come around on entry passes. Passers need to fake before passing to keep hands out of the passing lanes and deliver the ball where it needs to be received. The point guards need to shield the ball with their bodies to prevent reach in deflections and run faster while dribbling to put pressure on the defensive player. The player using a screen has to wait until the screen is set before moving toward it, so that the screen is effective and the screener is not called for a moving pick. This team wants to skip all the little things, and play sloppily and then can’t understand why it is not working.
I love this analysis..
Should we just go back to fundamentals then? Thats what it seems like we are lacking a bit.
Agree with assessment on RN
He does have an uncanny ability to finish with contact but that may be a result of being a bit undersized four. Against more athletic defenders he often gets his shot blocked, gets discouraged (slumps his shoulders) and doesn’t go after the deflection with the same desire. Another thing to consider is that Smith’s presence has made less room on the block for RN to setup. He really needs to develop at least the threat of a short jumper to up fake and go around his man. Sadly I think he’s out to prove he’s a three point shooter this year
by lilbobdog on Dec 7, 2010 12:49 PM PST via mobile up reply actions
Isn't Josh Smith the key to this entire season?
Last year we were 14-18. Personnel-wise, not much has changed from 2009-10 to 2010-11 to give any hope that we will finish better than 14-18 this year. Drago is gone, which is clearly a positive, but so is Roll, our leading scorer and best outside shooter.
In the backcourt, the swap of Zeke this year for Roll is neutral at best. We get better PG play moving Lee back to SG, but Lee hasn’t yet shown an ability to consistently shoot and score like Roll.
The swap of Smith for Drago in the frontcourt (with Honeycutt remaining at SF and Nelson remaining at PF) has the potential to be enormous. He’s a huge body that can score from the low post. Once that happens, it opens everything up…opponents will have to double him, creating room down low for Nelson and space outside for scorers Honeycutt and Lee (and Lamb). The fact that Honeycutt had his career high in Smith’s best game (Kansas) is likely not a coincidence.
But against Montana, Smith didn’t play very much (17 minutes, only 1PF, compared to 28 mins against Kansas). I know he didn’t shoot the ball well (1-for-8), but he’s still a handful for the opponent to deal with, and at the very least the additional playing time could allow him experience to learn to pass out of double-teams or whatever. Plus, it’s not likely you will shoot 12.5% for too long when all of your attempts are layups.
But the larger problem is that when Smith is sitting on the bench, then the frontcourt swap this year is Lane for Drago. And while Lane clearly works twice as hard as Drago, it’s not like he’s so much more skilled. So this swap also becomes approx. neutral, and now there is almost no reason to expect anything better than 14-18 again.
There are other reasons to expect better than 14-18
The general improvement that it is fair to expect from the sophomore versions of TH, RN, and BL. Multiple players returning to their natural positions, RN to the 4 and ML to the 2 should both net positive results, even though they’ve yet to be seen. Better team defense with the loss of Roll (I have great respect for him, but he wasn’t capable of keeping many people in front of him) and especially Drago. Better team morale and unity, which hopefully returns starting this weekend. The availability of two true centers, instead of playing RN at the 5. Having a healthy TH and BL (fingers crossed!).
Obviously this team still has tons of issues, but 14-18 this year would be the underachievement of the century and a freaking disaster.
Agreed re. improvements
Zen seems to be overlooking the fact that these are 18-20 year olds who tend to improve dramatically from year-to-year, rather than 30 year olds who have plateaued. By this rationale, Jrue Holiday is no better now than he was as a frosh at UCLA, yet magically he is averaging more points and assists per minute in the NBA than he did in college.
In theory, I agree...
…in practice, not so much (other than TH):
Honeycutt: Scoring/min is up 84%, shooting percentage flat 50% —> 51%
Lee: Scoring/min is up 13%, shooting percentage down 43% —> 38%
Nelson: Scoring/min is flat (0%), shooting percentage down 65% —> 56%
Lane: Scoring/min is down 17%, shooting percentage down 57% —> 48%
Qualitatively, I think most on this board would agree we see no remarkable improvement in defense, rebounding, ball handling (turnovers). All of this is my point. Of course I expect our talent to improve year to year, but they are only capable of so much growth, and last year (what we have as our baseline), we were bad. What we need to see real improvement is a systemic change, and that systemic change needs to be pound the ball as much as possible into our mammoth of a center, and play offense from the inside out, like we did against Kansas.
Until we do that, I can’t agree with this statement: “14-18 this year would be the underachievement of the century.” Obviously the sample size is small so far this season, but 3-4 = .428 win percentage. 14-18 = .438 win percentage. The way I see it, we are a .430 team right up until we prove that we aren’t.
Are you kidding "no remarkable improvement in rebounding"
Let’s just use statistics.
1. Josh Smith for Drago are you kidding? Smith averages 5 rebounds per 17.9 minutes. A dam good average. Drago averaged 4.4 Rebounds in 32.2 minutes. Smith is out rebounding Drago in less than half the minutes.
2. Do you think last year’s team on its best night could have played Kansas on the road to a draw? Or in statistics this years team is still out scoring its opponents 72.3 to 68.4. (We have not been blown out.) Last year our opponents out scored us 68.6 to 66.8.
We are better than last year but are we as good as we should be? No, not yet.
I totally agree with your point #2
Of course last year’s team would never have competed with Kansas like we did a week ago. This is the point I am trying to make with this thread. We need to play ALL our games like we played against Kansas. But not only does that mean the players need to show up and play with heart and passion like they did at Kansas (which was embarrassingly absent on Sunday night), it also means CBH needs to facilitate our team getting the ball into Smith on the low post like they did at Kansas. That means playing him more than 17 minutes, regardless of his shooting precentage. Against Villanova and VCU, we couldn’t do that because of Smith’s foul trouble. On Sunday against Montana, it seems like there was no good reason we went away from that. And the analogy I’m trying to draw is that when we do go away from that, all we really are is just a marginally better and more experienced team than last year.
Pacific and Montana are similar teams
We beat Pacific without Smith (his second worse game) but lost to Montana. Montana has a faster PG and two bigs but still not sure Smith is the only solution.
I agree with you completely that this team cannot cruise against anyone and needs to “play with heart and passion like they did at Kansas” every night.
While you acknowledge
the sample size is small, I still think the statistics are a bit absurd to draw conclusions from in comparison to last year’s. 50% of our losses and nearly 29% of our games are against top 10 teams. If last year’s team played a top 10 team every week they’d have gone 10-22.
I agree
But you see where I am going with this. We have played 4 bad-to-average teams this year and we are 3-1. We have played 3 good teams this year, and we are 0-3. Once Pac-10 play begins, just about everyone falls somewhere between VCU and Montana. I’d like to go 12-6, but 7-11 (.389) or 8-10 (.444) seems like it could be a real possibility, no?
MANY other reasons why we should be better than 14-18
1. Honeycutt missed the first six games and could not lift weights all last year. In other words, Honeycutt was never a 100% last year. Honeycutt also was able to improve his outside shot. Honeycutt this year is a much healthy and better player.
2. Better team defense. Last year zone was the only option because of not only Drago but also Roll and Anderson. This year we added Tyler Lamb, who is already the second best defender on the team. We did not have a good defender on the bench last year. Also Anderson is a better man defender this year. He is not good but IMO Anderson not Drago was the worst defender last year. It is nice to see Anderson improve.
3. CBH has said “this year we have a PG.” It is more than a trade for a position it is actually having someone who can play the position. Jones is not going to make anyone forget DC but he is a PG.
I could go on for other reasons that I hope will develop. This team will not go 14-18. However, it is still very much a work a progress and how much better remains to be seen.
I want to chalk it up to sickness
Nelson and Smith were both sick, if the game thread is any indication
Could be right
It seems more likely for Smith but Nelson has been going this way for a bit. Also, Smith minutes were cut a bit at the end as we went press all out. (Nelson too, when he failed at being the deep man in the press, CBH went to Lane.)
Work harder through the whole game throughout the season ... (Basketball)
Our team seems to not have the power to get them through the full game. Further, we seem to step back when we are very low in the game. We need these athletes to step up and make the UCLA letters mean something more than just in Westwood. Let’s get our University back on the national market.
Beaten by quickness and a solid zone defense
You can’t create speed but can improve quickness. The zone is another story. It works really well with a tean without a good 3-point shooter. They just pack it in and as we try to attack with dribble penetration and dished to our bigs they are quick to cover with 2 or more people. While I am not ready to concede the season, there must be improvement and someone must step-up and make a couple of 3’s-If Carlino is healthy let him try as well as Lamb and Honeycutt.
Tatoos
Pardon me, but who died and made every basketball player start defacing their bodies with tatoos? I wonder how Coach Wooden would have dealt with that…..
Sorry, just musing…..
You probably already know the answer.
He’d tell the young man that they are free to decorate their body anyway they want, but that they won’t be a part of the team if they choose to do that. Basically said the same thing to Bill Walton: You’re free to grow your hair long, you just won’t play for me.
So many issues in Montana game
So many things didn’t happen that we seemed to be able to accomplish in the second half in other games that I can only hope that this was indeed an aberration and for whatever reason the team as a whole looked listless. RN, in particular, just looked tired as people have mentioned… and it wasn’t just contested layups, he missed a few point blank layups. I have no explanation for it, but it does seem like his normal play. A few thoughts to piggy back on other people’s thoughts:
- Malcolm Lee looks horrible in the half court offense. His outside shot is wild, he seems to get lost in his dribble and put up shots he’s not prepared to shoot… he does a nice job of going to the whole on the fast break, but then he can’t consistently make free throws, so it’s kind of useless. I think at this point he needs to recognize he’s not the go to guy when the clock’s running down.
- I agree with some people that we’re doing a better job on zone in getting the ball inside instead of just jacking it up from the outside, but in the Montana game, but there still was a lot of the passing around the perimeter while standing around to fight the zone. I hate that… it literally just makes the offense completely stop and allow the defense to dictate the pace. I understand what they’re trying to do, but I think if we play it like that, it gives the other team the advantage.
- Yes, Zeke is a solid PG, and maybe more importantly, he’s one of the oldest guys on the team and brings some maturity. He can consistently hit outside shots, and seems to be able to make free throws. That being said, he’s obviously adjusting to playing real D1 opposition, so it’s yet another part of our game that will need to develop over the season, and people need to step up and help when quicker guards blow past him.
- JS is doing a better job of moving his feet and taking charges. He really hustles for the ball, which is great, too… however, when he hits the ground, it’s hard for him to quickly get up, and there have been a few times we’ve been playing four guys on defense waiting for him. Not sure what to tell him because I like his hustle, but it’s a problem hopefully he can work out.
That’s enough rambling from me… I still like this team and these kids. They seem very earnest and hard working, along with some genuine talent… they seemed to grow up so fast in the Kansas game, but this Montana game has shown there are still many inconsistent components to everyone’s game that can add up to a really poor performance. I’m still waiting a few games before I make a judgment on these guys.
Anyone else remember Sidney Wicks as a Freshman and Sophomore?
He was TERRIBLE handling the ball. Always out of control. Fouled a lot, too if I recall correctly. Out of position, mind not in the game. He turned out pretty well!
Most of our team members are freshman and sophomores. IF they stay in school, they’ll get better and better, IMHO. (Here’s hoping for an NBA lockout so nobody is tempted to jump ship early!)
Mental toughness and focus
Especially Reeves, who wears his emotions on his sleeve. Too many times he’s gotten beat defensively and when he struggles offensively, he pouts and that type of negativity is not healthy for him or the team. He needs to stay sharp the entire game. The entire team just does not have the will that past great Howland teams have had. I don’t even know if this is something that they can learn… or if they’re even trying to learn.
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