bruinbasketball already fanshotted the news about Dominic Artis "decommitting" from UCLA.  Right now there isn't a lot of public information out there except for this Jeff Borzello story, which bb already shared.  Scout.com's Josh Gershon posted this premium story on BruinReportOnline.com, which is consistent with the content on Borzello's post on Sportsline.com

I think there are few thoughts worth noting here:

• It is worth noting that Ben Howland specifically passed on the recruitment of solid point guard prospects such as Javan Felix and L.J. Rose after he had secured a "commitment" from Artis. Felix ended up committing to Texas and Rose to Baylor.
• As speculated in the comment thread the school of thought the Kyle Anderson recruitment may have discouraged Artis seems reasonable. We have heard murmurs about a certain school being the chief culprit wrt to "negative recruiting" against UCLA. We will bite our lips for now.
• The commitment of Kyle Anderson also steered Arnaud Moto - an extremely athletic, defensive oriented LRMAM style Cameroonian forward - to Wake Forest. Arguably Moto, a strong, physical, defensive wing-forward, would have been a prototypical "Ben Ball Warrior." Ugh.

There are not a lot of elite point guard recruits left on the board at this point. So Howland will continue to need to "recruit" Artis and assuage whatever concerns he may have about UCLA. He has no choice at this point.

Bruins incoming recruiting class is now made up of Jordan Adams and Kyle Anderson, which is nice. The class still needs to round up with Shabbazz Muahammad. And even if we get Shabbaz, we would like to see a true point guard in this class. A class without a true point guard will be disappointing.  If the Bruins do not secure a true point guard commitment for this class, it won't be a comforting thought to realize that we haven't had anyone decent here since the days of RW and DC (I don't think much of Mr. Lauren Cheney and don't really consider him a true Bruin).

I appreciate the buzz Howland has generated this early Fall with the commitments of Jordan Adams and Kyle Anderson. However, at the end of the day, it will be up to him to put together a program that is truly committed to "Ben Ball" (grounded on defense and fundamentals), and put the Bruins back in position to win the Pac-12 conference and make Final-4 runs by playing fundamentally sound basketball.

As is the case with Rick Neuheisel, we are going to judge Ben Howland by on court results this season and next. It will up to him to make sure he gets it done on the recruiting trail and then on the court.

GO  BRUINS.