UCLA 1-0 in Post Reeves Nelson Era

1.

They are still incredibly frustrating to watch on defense though. If they put as much effort into their defensive rebounding, boxing out and fighting for position, as they did hunting for offensive rebounds, the ceiling on this team would be much higher.

How can 6’10 guys be such bad offense rebounders?

2.

I also liked Norman Powell’s contributions, and he’s proving to be one of the more solid players in our rotation. His defense is objectively superior to Tyler Lamb’s, and it’s pretty clear whose minutes Norman should be eating into in the future.

Powell needs minutes as he is raw but still looks better . Powell is now shooting 45% FG and 33% from three. Lamb is 35% FG and 24% from three. Powell needs to play more now.

When 3 other guys transfer because of Howland…Not a big fan of Howland and his style of ball its time for a change.

It is a rare show of character when a coach takes a very talented player like Nelson and fires him because he is disruptive. Howland has the gonads to put the integrity of the sport above simple win/loss. If more college coaches would actually walk-the-walk about the importance of character, we’d have fewer bozo, out of control professional athletes and the hoardes of imbeciles who idolize them. In the best tradition of coach Wooden, hats off to you Howland.

I liked him, still does and only wishes him the very best in life. I do understand Howland’s position on the issue of player discipline.

A player must demonstrate the willingness to be taught, or coached in this particular instance. Reeve apparently let his temper get the best of him once too many times, even though that side him was in plain view since day one. His incredible passion to compete and prevail over anyone standing jn his way drew appreciative remarks. He rallied sagging team spirits during critical moments. But when he went overboard, it became unyielding hard headedness. Then to act as if he was above everything else, that gave me the pause to think too if he would worth placating anymore, to the extent that Howland already did without risking the criticism of coddling a punk.

KSBruin said it well. Had Howland not coddled the Serbian madbomber to the bitter end of that horrendous season, how much more positive things would have been.

Eastern Washington and Richmond have winning records, EWU’s losses coming mostly to Pac-12 teams. Davis and Irvine are terrible.

The Bruins must win at least 3 of those games to have any hope of a decent season, and they probably will. Then they go to Palo Alto and Berkeley.

At this point, it’s impossible to say. They just struggled against an Ivy League team, and not the best team in the ivy League, either. The last time UCLA played Penn, in 1987, I think they said, the score was 98-49. It’s pretty safe to say that this team probably wouldn’t have beaten Harvard, and just that thought alone gives me heartburn.

I think I’m going to follow the old maxim this season: expect the worst and hope for the best.

It’s too bad to loose Nelson, but it seems we may be a better team without him. It’s definitely a different team than we thought. Before they were going big, and they are running pretty much three guards and two forwards most of the time. Smith’s ridiculous weight has been a huge problem as well.

So, instead of Smith-Nelson-Jones, it’s becoming more of a true team. It’s a deep team as well, one of the deepest we’ve seen at UCLA in a long time. I think there is little doubt that they will improve throughout the year…how much remains to be seen. They’re going to have to go on a long win-streak like last year, probably longer.

Hopefully by the new year we’ll have a better sense of this teams identity. From the box score, it looks a lot like a Howland win: they had them down by a bunch until 10 min left, and then Penn St. got hot, but couldn’t get over the hump., Penn. St. got 71 pts, we’ll need to do better than that on average.

And it would be nice if Brendan Lane could see some action too.