Exhibiting his true personality of a pirate, ravaging and pillaging wherever he goes. Or he is thief? Stealing a valuable UCLA education and experience from us.

Can’t say much for the rest of the team

Seems rather unmotivated / indifferent at times- kind of like Lamar Odom, or even our beloved JR Henderson (or JR Sakaruki?)

Has the skills, but I don’t know if he has the right mindset.

Guess it won’t matter, he’ll probably declare next week…

Who stays and who goes for next year? ML, Bobo gone? I don’t see how much better we can be if we lose a couple more players to transfer or NBA. Lack of depth will be an issue, even with the three commits. Does anyone have any updates on the other three (Jones, McCallum, Ziegler). The name Howland is losing prestige in college basketball.

He seemed to lack focus at both ends of the court.

But when it diminishes the reputation of our University, it should not be tolerated.

Was CBH protecting him from the spattering of boos by not pulling him like he did Roll?

He did such a good job representing us off the court. I mean, you don’t have to have talent for that at the very least.

Does not deserve much leeway. He has not proven himself as a coach who can keep a program on top. He had some of the best players in the country over the past several years (as evidenced by so many of our guys playing in the NBA plus some incredible warriors like LMR) and he couldn’t win a championship. And those games that those teams lost were quite similar to most of the games this season—we were out-coached and basically looked like a deer in the headlights, scratching our heads while the other teams walked over us. My complaints then were the same as now—Howland is not a good a game coach. He is stubborn and does not change things up even when it is obvious to anyone else watching that something needs to change.

I blame Howland for ND. What kind of coach let’s a guy kill a team with consistently terrible shooting that leads to the other team getting easy buckets 9 times out of 10? In fact if anything, Howland must be telling Rags to keep shooting. He finally in the last two games of the season realized he can’t guard anyone so he stuck him under the basket on the zone. We can hate Rags but the blame is squarely on his coach.

And there are plenty of other examples. I think Howland’s time is up. He’d better do something more than pray if he wants to see the final 4 with this team ever again. He’s lost me.

hehehe

for the year for that felony. Our season probably would have been better. At least players like Brendan Lane would have had time to develop.

Take a deep breath brothers and sisters. We lost to a veteran team that had to play their best to beat us. Don’t forget we have 3 freshmen and 2 sophs in our top 7 players. We have the nucleus of a good team next year with a top class coming in. The Pac 10 will be there for the taking. I’ve seen a lot of young Bruins look like bums as frosh and soph including Sidney Wicks and Marques Johnson. They both wound up being NCAA players of the year(Iknow they had the Wizzard coaching them). Just saying that it take one or two years of college competition to develope these kids. Hang in there.

It’s not ideal, I understand. But we’re UCLA. We’ll reload.

“be quick but not in a hurry…”

on this mediocre team leave than lose a high profile coach who can bring the program back.
Next year, we have TH, RN, BL, ML, Lazeric Jones, Josh Smith and Tyler Lamb, with JA playing backup minutes and perhaps another good point guard fighting for the starting spot. Anthony Stover may get some minutes. That doesn’t sound terrible to me. Starting over with a coach similar to Kevin O’Neil woud be a huge step down. Player who could play, TH and RN, played huge minutes. Bobo showed flashes, but really is still a project. MM might be a great player, but I highly doubt it.

I support the program, and that means I support the Coach under these circumstances. I don’t always understand his decisions, could not believe his continued play of Rago over that last few games, but I am looking forward to a better program next year, with a solid base of players.

There is always the appeal process and trying to get in through Marching Band has also been done. Good luck -we need people who want to be here

are you so certain that ND was CBH’s favorite? UCLA fans trash everyone who isn’t a future NBA starter or under-skilled overachiever. If you were coaching freshman who aren’t Love or Durant and are going to have limited success, why would you subject them to those attacks? Why would you destroy the psyche of young players?

I’m not going to defend CBH’s game planning, or his recruiting. I’m not going to defend his stubborn refusal to explore a style of play that better suits his players over a style of play that he believes ideal. What I will say is this… ND is the face of this season and hated by seemingly every Bruin I know. He didn’t get a curtain call. Instead, he was left on the floor to go down with the ship.

Going into next season, not a single returning player is viewed as responsible for this year. Not one returning player is blamed or disliked for their role in this catastrophe. Howland and ND have received every ounce of blame for the season we have had to endure. I actually think that is a good thing. If CHB is to turn this around, this is the only way it could be.

I genuinely don’t believe ND received some sort of “favorite son” treatment. I think he was a sacrificial lamb. If I’m right… it worked brilliantly. CBH protected every single returning player from responsibility for this season. With the opportunity to frame their own legacy without the burden of this failure, it is time to regroup and build again. Go Bruins!

As many problems, disgraces and letdowns we’ve had this year, MR made us all proud this year by not complaining, playing tough and fighting to the end. I hope he stays involved with UCLA bball.

However, maybe he can work his rebuilding magic now.

and want to wait and see how this all plays out but I truly hope that there is not something bad boiling up behind the scenes and that CBH is making a mad dash a la calipari or cheatey Peetey. I truly believe in CBH and what he has done for this program. I hope nothing comes out to change my views.

But we can’t overcome that kind of shooting performance from him if we can’t defend and aren’t getting perfect games from everyone else.

In terms of analysis: ND killed us with horrible shots, which weren’t even close; he had a few good defensive moments, but nothing close to offsetting his shooting. JA had his best offensive game of the season but couldn’t guard convincingly – maybe a hard foul earlier on Randle would have been more effective. We got another disappointing showing from TH, taking himself out of the game with fouls. RN tried hard but was a man-child playing against men inside. ML hustled well on defense. BL was completely outmatched against people with senior bodies.

Defense – in my opinion, the man-to-man worked in the first half even though we gave up 50% shooting, because it helped us win the first half rebounding battle and helped us spark some offense in transition and get some easy baskets. JA did get abused a few times, but the overall effect was that we were leading.

In the second half, it didn’t seem to matter whether we were playing zone or man, we were being scored on with ease, whether through penetration (which the zone is supposed to discourage) or through Cal’s superior outside shooting. And we stopped getting so many easy baskets on our offensive end.

It also looked like we ran out of gas – partly because we had played a tough game the day before, partly because some of our guys aren’t fully healthy, partly because of the short rotation. I wonder if the game plan was to try to come out on fire and put Cal in the hole, and then hope Montgomery would start thinking about resting some of his players for the NCAA tourney. We looked like we were really hustling to start the game, but couldn’t maintain down the stretch.