Howland Makes Ugly History, Remains On Pace For A Disgraceful Losing Season At UCLA

especially
“should be no excuse for it(losing season) and should end up putting Howland under pressure.”

That was a tough one. I would have liked to see Moser get some more run with Lane and Dragovic not playing well. I don’t see why we can’t play some small ball. It’s not like our “bigs” defend anyway so we wouldn’t be losing much post D. I wont give up faith for a positive record (I know.. shooting for the stars). In Howland We Trust. I wont give up on him.

Go Bruins.

I gotta chime in on this one

Howland totally whiffed on the sophomore class. Like someone said in the in-game thread, that class has hurt us immensely. It will take at least 2-3 years to recover from what was the consensus #1 class in the country (looking back at that now, how big of a joke was that ranking!)

On the whole, however, I was happy with two things I saw today: Starting Brendan Lane, and getting Moser some minutes. As a sidenote, can anyone tell me when was the last time UCLA took a charge before Moser got one tonight? I can’t think of it off the top of my head, and I’d NEVER thought I would say that before this year.

To me, at least, Howland gets a freebie on this year because of his past success. However, many warnings signs exist — stubbornness on going with the zone, continued PT for Dragovic and Anderson, etc.

Next year is the make or break year, IMO, for Howland. I will continue to give him the benefit of the doubt. Why? He’s earned it with three straight Final Fours — period.

It was completely reasonable of Howland to hope that Anderson might play at a 10th grade level. MAH couldn’t have done worse but he’s not an answer to break pressure, because he’s too small and athletically limited to pass out of a trap. If you blame Howland for Anderson getting picked like a rose twice in the open court then you might as well blame him for everything ever.

As I said in the other thread, we played decent and mostly tough D and outrebounded a far superior and bigger rebounding team by a huge margin. That’s due to coaching. We lost because our two best players, both freshmen, took themselves completely out of the game and we have nothing to make up for that, and our “point guards” are incredibly stupid. Yes that’s due to recruiting but it’s not a new failure to blame Howland for over and over. If somebody can tell me what he could’ve done better other than a couple extra minutes to a walkon I’d love to know.

this team is what it is, and it isn’t going to change. I saw Nestor’s post before the game today and as usual I totally agreed with him. Why people continue to believe that this stuff will get turned around is beyond me. Only a fool keeps doing the same thing, OVER AND OVER AGAIN, when it isn’t working. As long as CBH continues to play Rago as much as he does, as long as he continues to give important minutes to Anderturnover, the results are going to be the same.

I cracked up reading the posts from people saying………“well, Moser and Lane got their minutes tonight, and look what happened?” Yeah, look what happened. They made mistakes. Because they weren’t allowed to develop and make those mistakes against the Fullerton’s of the world. Now, they are thrown into the heat of the battle, and what do you think is going to happen. But I was more than happy to see Lane and Moser out there doing their best, knowing that at least they were giving it their all and attempting to play defense and hustle on the floor. That is alot more than Rago can say. I will take that effort from Lane and Moser all year, for the rest of the year, knowing that it can only help us next year.

I have a question for you. Would JA even make the ALL-CIF team this year? How about all-league if he played in the CITY Section? I say no. I have seen Mater Dei play several times this year, and I don’t think if he showed up on campus that he could even start for Gary McKnight’s team this year. Yet, he is ok to throw out on the court for the greatest basketball program (historically) in the history of the United States. Think about that for a minute.

As for CBH, I agree that the thought of replacing him shouldn’t even be mentioned. He has done too much good throughout the past few years. However, for him to get better, he must be on the hot seat. He needs to know that his stubborness and lack of talent evaluation has cost the program. He isn’t dumb, that is for sure, so I am positive that he knows that. It is on him. He needs to feel the heat, because this team is a joke. The only thing that makes it easier is knowing that Rago is a senior and is almost gone.

Id like to see MAH get the minutes over Anderson, but if you guys think this is a lost season, and we need to rebuild, what would you do? This is MAH’s last year so why give him minutes? Lee will bounce to the NBA after this year without looking back, so why keep giving him minutes? If Howland gives up on the season, i’d like Moser to get a ton of minutes to see what he can do. Also some minutes for Lee to keep him happy and maybe stay for his Jr year.

Idk how I didnt know that MAH is a redshirt Jr. He has been there forever. In that case, GIVE HIM MORE MINUTES NOW

I had to run down to Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffle’s and get some southern comfort food after the game. To answer your question on the offense, my problem is with a few things.

1) It bothers the heck out of me that we don’t have a fastbreak offense. Now, I understand that we don’t have the athletes necessary to run a truly effective fastbreak offense, but even when we did we didn’t run one. The best we do is have the pg push the ball up the floor and have guys fill lanes, but only if we absolutely have the numbers advantage. I am tired of watching all of CBH’s teams walk the ball up the floor. Even when we had DC, the quickest pg in the country, we didn’t have a true fastbreak offense.

2) I also can’t stand the fact that we don’t switch up our defenses, and play absolutely NO fullcourt defense, unless we are behind late in the game. CBH is a great teacher of halfcourt man-man defense. However, we don’t create any offense from our defense. He stresses great fundamentals of staying in front of the ball and usually being able to stop dribble penetration. Without the players this year, he obviously needed to change to the zone. That is on him for not recruiting players to his system. However, with guys like MM, TH, RN, ML……….those guys can all play fullcourt man defense. However, they don’t. I would just like to see him switch it up and keep teams off balance. We are a very easy team to prepare for, even in past years, cause we are/were very predictable in our defensive scheme. In the past, we just had the superior playes, so it didn’t matter. However, when we played teams with talent at our level or above (Florida, Villanova, etc) they were able to exploit our defense cause it was predictable.

As I have written before, this team is a mess. They are all limited, too limited for Pac-10 players. My biggest concern going into the future though isn’t necessarily anything I said above. As much as I am concerned about our lack of a fastbreak offense, or a defense that pressures the offense, or even the evaluation of talent…………my biggest concern is the coaching staff. I like CBH. I respect him. However, it has become painfully obvious that our lack of quality assistant coaches is hurting us badly. CBH has always had strong guys sitting to his right. Dixon, Zieglar, etc……all the ultimate assistant coaches. In the coaching community, the assistant coaches do the bulk of the recruiting (CBH is the closer) and the bulk of the developing of players. That isn’t happening and I am concerned if it will. I think CBH needs to carefully examine this part of his program. Is he too stubborn too? I don’t know. I also hope, as I have stated before, that CBH makes a greater commitment to recruiting some inner city/SF Valley city/LB area kids who can play with reckless abandon and bring a swagger back to our program just like JF, AA, and LMM (all tough city kids) did when we needed it at the beginning of the CBH era.

The only way to salvage this season is for Howland to make drastic changes during the off-season to shore up recruiting actual basketball talent and a modification in his coaching philosophy where this kind of season never ever happens again.

I mean that in a couple of ways. I am still waiting to watch the replay of the game, but this thought came just after reading this thread and the game thread.

MAH is not the answer, or even part of the answer, for our point guard woes. If you put his brain in Anderson’s body, we might have a good point guard. MAH is just not a D-I level athlete, from a purely athletic standpoint. He is no threat to penetrate, and is a target with the ball in his hands for any aggressive defensive strategies an opposing coach wishes to throw at us.

It is mentioned above that he still has a year of eligibility as a redshirt junior, and so in the ‘building-for-the-future’ strategy that most advocate here, he should be getting minutes. Does anyone know what his plans are? (Genuine, not rhetorical, question) He is an academic superstar with a well-rounded CV and work experience, and is the definition of the guy who will “turn pro in something else”. Given his academics, I’m guessing he may well be in poisition to graduate in 4 years, or shortly thereafter, if he so chooses. If so, it is not clear that he would delay a year in a successful post-college career in order to come back to be a fringe player.

If he says he is coming back (grad school?), it’s still not clear he should get many ‘development’ minutes. Compare and contrast him and Anderson: MAH looks like he is a guy wih good basketball IQ, playing hard and playing smart to the best of his athletic ability; Anderson is a guy who is clearly not playing to the potential he showed in high school, is not a terrible athlete but plays slower than top speed because he is having to think too much and doesn’t think quickly enough. You can’t coach MAH to be taller or more athletic, and giving him extra minutes is unlikely to affect his development that much – he already looks like he understands the system and plays with decent composure. Extra minutes for Anderson seem to have more potential to provide improvement, as he seems further behind MAH in his understanding of how CBH’s offense is supposed to work. I know he has had plenty of minutes and appears to have shown himself a slow learner – but I think he must still be further from his ceiling than MAH and could benefit from minutes.

Finally, let’s say MAH comes back next year as a backup guard. His major pros are that he is a good long-range shooter, passes the ball well to players moving off the ball, unselfish team-first guy willing to work for a better shot for his teammates. Major cons: not athletic → not a threat to penetrate off the dribble, struggles to guard athletic players one-on-one (has to rely on good defensive positioning at all times), can’t create his own shot. I say to you: MAH is not the second coming of a Farmar, Collison or Westbrook ; rather, he is more like (a smaller version of) Michael Roll (pre-senior version).

Next year’s squad is going to have two juniors (JA and Zeke) competing for the starting PG spot, with ML also in the mix if he returns. However, we are losing our two most … designated? … three point shooters to graduation in MR and ND, and JA/ML have both struggled from beyond the arc. If MAH returns, I don’t think he will be used as much as a backup point guard, but as a 3-point specialist to space the floor or bust a zone, while playing fundamentally smart basketball and setting a good example with his effort and unselfish play. If ML returns, we will have a team with two ‘slashers’ in TH and ML, a good finisher around the rim in RN, and a couple of centers who like room to work their man one-on-one in JMM and JS2. I think MAH could be a complement to that core playing a specific role that does not require him to penetrate with the ball and does not require him to lock down opposing point guards.

If the rebuilding project starts now, I would give MAH a few extra minutes out of MR’s time, and/or try a few minutes with TH as a point forward and MAH playing the 1 as an additional shooter. Giving him minutes running the team as a point guard doesn’t do much to help the team win right now and may not do much to develop the team for next year.

Not surprised that BL got more minutes last night with JK out; but is the “RN off the bench” strategy working so well that we don’t want to mess with that by putting him in the starting lineup? Previous argument from CBH was that he wanted to ‘set the tone’ defensively by having JK start – which I can buy to an extent – but it is hard to believe he thought that throwing BL in there would have the same effect. Does anyone have an answer (beyond “Howland fears change”…) for that move? Not bashing BL, just curious as to the rationale for starting RN on the bench again.

but he needs some good assistants. I remember in the past all coaches did have one or two good assistant coaches who had good judgement on recruits. Under Howland I felt especially this group of players we have mostly over-rated ones. I have never seen any past UCLA team shoot and pass so poorly. I am sick and tired of all the turn-overs and 60% FT shooting. I am having doubts about their judgement on distinguish good quality from the bad when they were recruiting. To tell the truth, I am already given up this year because it was so painful to them shoot. I was holding my breath everytime they pass or shoot. I don’t want to criticize ND anymore because the subs are not much better off. Good luck next year.

Miserable free throw shooting-no point guard-too late to the zone-and terrible recruiting. Syracuse who has had there share of one/two and dones-is highly ranked and play zone. Get off your tails and beat the bushes for point guards. As far as free throws go-change your drills because obviosly these are not working