UCLA Basketball Roundup: Can the Bruins Bounce Back?
by DCBruins on Jan 1, 2012 1:30 PM PST
in Basketball
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PrintUCLA put up a valiant effort on the road against Stanford but gave up in the second half on defense against Cal. The moral is simple: no UCLA team can let an oponent shoot 64% and expect to win. And it was not like Allen Crabbe or Jorge Gutierrez where killing UCLA, it was guys that should not even be playing much such as David Kravish (filling in for the injured Richard Solomon) and some guy named Robert Thurman who went 5-5 and in making five buckets almost equaled his season total (6). UCLA's defense was terrible.
"Cal just scored too easily," Coach Ben Howland said. "Whether it was against our man or our zone, they just scored so easily."
The Golden Bears shot 65.4% from the field and had 28 assists on 34 baskets, a sign that the Bruins couldn't disrupt Cal's rhythm. Six Golden Bears scored in double figures, led by Allen Crabbe's 20 points.
"They just continued to score time after time after time," he [Howland] said. "We were just slow."
More on this after the jump. But this sets up a tough situation. I wrote before the Bay Area trip that a split means we have a shot at the Pac-12 title and a NCAA tournament bid, two losses mean NIT, which is unacceptable. The Bruins know that and as Tyler Lamb said:
"Coming back, it's going to be very hard but it has to be done," he said. "I'm pretty sure everybody in that locker room wants to turn the season around. From this point every game is a must-win game."
Peter Yoon at ESPN elaborates a bit
What it means: The Bruins opened Pac-12 play 0-2 for the first time since 1987-88. The Bruins actually started 0-3 in conference that year, but recovered to finish 12-6 and tied for second in the conference but did not make the NCAA tournament. Coach Walt Hazzard was fired after that season.
The Bruins continue a tough opening stretch against Arizona Thursday at the Honda Center in a game the Bruins almost certainly have to win if they are going to get the season turned around and make a run at an NCAA tournament berth.
Why is this happening? UCLA was able to stay with Cal in the first half because of the hot shooting of Tyler lamb. Similar to the Stanford game where we were close because of Lazeric Jones. But at the end of the day, these two are not AA who can carry a team by themselves and the rest of the team is looking nonathletic and not up to this level. As Yoon explains in a different piece on the searching Bruins:
Their front court was lauded as among the most formidable in the nation with 6-10 twins David and Travis Wear boasting a front line that included a rising star at center in Joshua Smith and an all-conference forward in Reeves Nelson.
The Wear twins have proven wildly inconsistent on the offensive end and are a defensive liability. Smith has failed to live up to expectations because of conditioning issues and an inability to handle double teams in the post. Nelson was kicked off the team because of continuing behavioral issues.
So with the front court failing to live up to expectations, the backcourt has picked up some of the slack. Jones and Tyler Lamb have been the two most reliable payers, but both have been up and down as they try to do too much at times and the team has no true go-to clutch player.
Thus it comes down to defense. Going into the Cal game, UCLA had held 5 straight opponents (including Stanford) under 40%, but Cal destroyed UCLA for 65.4%. But it was worse than that:
They are also insecure in who they want to be defensively. Howland prefers the tough man-to-man style that brought him so much success at UCLA, but the current team lacks the speed and athleticism to play that style on a consistent basis. It's much better suited to a zone, but Howland has alternated zone and man defenses, creating even more confusion around UCLA's identity.
Jerime Anderson and the Wears are just too slow to play man-to-man. Lazeric Jones and Tyler Lamb are better but are not stoppers. Right now Smith is horrid and foul prone if he has to move too much. There are solutions but it may force Howland out of his comfort zone. Being a zone first team. But if he insists on man-to-man only doing so with Norman Powell in for Anderson and Anthony Stover for Smith.
Otherwise it does not matter how well the Bruins play on offense for as Howland said:
Somehow, the Bruins trailed just 40-39 going into the intermission despite shooting just 43.3 percent in the first half.
"The first half we played pretty well offensively to keep it to a one-point game, but when you keep letting a team score every time they have the ball, eventually you're digging a hole for yourself," Howland said.
Go Bruins
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Generallt agree with Yoon's take ...
Except for this:
It’s unlikely that coach Ben Howland would meet that fate, but you have to imagine the credit he built up from three consecutive Final Four appearances will be running low if the Bruins don’t get things turned around in a hurry. If UCLA doesn’t make the NCAA tournament it would be the second time in three years that has happened.Actually if Bruins don’t make the tourney and lose Shabbaz, Howland is done. The credit he has built from the Final-4 appearances is gone. That was gone two years ago when he put together the disgraceful losing season and then followed it up with a meh one last year, when he barely met minimum expectations.
"The credit he has built from the Final-4 appearances is gone."
I could not agree more. It’s not just losing games. Coach’s teams lost games. It’s the eye test failures. Our team looks like the teams that we used to routinely rout.
agreed
the commentators during the game said “arron afflalo and mbah a moute aren’t walking through that door anytime soon”. he was right. afflalo+farmar+ Luc+ westbrook+collison+ kevin love=0 national championships? That math doesn’t add up. And guys with that kind of talent just aren’t looking at UCLA with Howland running his no fun program. A Howland cratering may also expedite Chianti’s demise which I would love.
by Strathmore&Gayley on Jan 1, 2012 2:09 PM PST reply actions
Cal played as a team... compare to Ucla individualism..
… with absolutely no offensive ball mouvement execution.. just individual effort.
Digging In His Heels
For the life of me, I can’t understand why Coach Howland continues to dig his heels in and refuse to bend from a style that is clearly not working. This has been yet another season of trying to fit square pieces into round holes. But the most confounding thing is that he is the one recruiting these players. So, if they’re not the right mix or not performing the game plan that he’s trying to institute, then it’s his fault for not recruiting the right guys.
I sadly agree with Yoon, though, that he’ll be given this season and next season, at a minimum. The thought will be that he’s built up enough good will that he’ll be given the chance to open the new Pauley and given one last shot with his new top recruits.
I can only hope that this is like Florida, who after their run had many years or mediocrity before rising again. But that will only happen if Coach Howland can be the one to change, not his players.
by rocket rod forever on Jan 1, 2012 3:17 PM PST reply actions
so sad to admit it but I am with you
"Winners Then, Winners Now... Bruin in Madrid"
by uclaprofe on Jan 1, 2012 3:55 PM PST via iPhone app up reply actions
farce of a bball team
howland is out of chances…the most stubborn coach i can recall…well thought comments about recruiting versus system…this team has no consistent scorer and cant play defense…you will not win scoring 50/60 and giving up 70…a disgrace…if i were anderson i would opt out and lose a year
I don't like anything Ben Howland is doing
I don’t like his recruiting, I don’t like his system, I don’t like his stubbornness, and at the end of the day, I don’t like the results he’s getting.
Coach Wooden said, success is peace of mind which is the direct result of the self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.
Does any part of what Ben Howland or any of his team is doing come close to that standard? This is not a UCLA team I am proud of, and it has not been that way for several years now. In my opinion, it is well past tiime for a change.
With a team full of very-near future NBA All Stars, Howland could not win a championship.
I always thought he was overrated. His offensive schemes could have been designed by a basketball Terry Donahue.
I find him unimaginative, colorless, stubborn and stuck in the 1990s. His recruiting is absolutely dreadful, his inability to keep good players shocking, and his clock management is a national joke.
While I think Howland needs to be replaced, the last person to do it is Dan Guerrero (the man who is now working on his 6th head football coach, full time or interim).
we're screwed.
if as Yoon suggest, we need to go Zone defense full time. We’re screwed because we know that Howland will not know how to implement a world class Zone. We’re screwed because we already know Howland cannot implement any kind of offense. So, we can expect another season without a tournament, and the beginning of the loss of top tier recruits. They have already begun avoiding us, but with recruits like Tyler Anderson, maybe not entirely. But they will after this year.
Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. ~ Vince Lombardi
I don't understand why so many are insistent on a zone defense
Or seem to be implying that a zone is somehow going to turn around the fortunes of this team. Cal absolutely picked apart UCLA’s zone because their bigs cannot play defense. They cannot rotate, they cannot help defend, they cannot rebound. Well, of course they can, but they don’t.
Howland can have them play Cover-2, and it still won’t work unless the Wears, Smith, etc, all figure out their defensive responsibilities. The reason they can’t play man-to-man is the same reason they can’t play zone. There are too many awful defenders on this team.
They can learn the zone and maybe get better
I don’t see any of them getting any quicker to make man to man work. That is why I would like to see more zone. We also look better offensively against a zone now that we play some zone. Not that it is getting us wins, but I think we get absolutely crushed by both Stanford and Cal if we played them 100% m2m.
That's the thing -- too slow to play M2M means the zone still has holes
Stanford didn’t play well at all. But what got them the win was a huge breakdown (slow rotation by bigs) that led to three straight threes from the corner. And Cal absolutely sliced apart the zone by running continuous pick-and-rolls that again the bigs failed to cover.
I do see them getting better at it — they have to — they’re not that basketball stupid. But what I don’t get is why so many seem to think a zone defense is the solution to this team’s problems. A zone will help, but the same problems this team has running M2M are the same problems it’ll have running a zone.
The post asks the question "Can the Bruins bounce back."
I think the answer is a resounding “NO.” I see no signs of life in this corpse.
So what are we supposed to do?
Wait around for Dan to be fired. Meantime Howland drags the program further down the drain. What a happy new year.
Question for those who know baskestball much better than I...
Everyone agrees Howland was a great hire several years ago.
What happens to a coach who loses his coaching skills?
Have the palyers changed?
Has the game changed?
Does he lose touch with his players?
Or does the coach just sit back and phone it in after getting a nice contract extension?
I don't think he changed or he lost touch
The big thing is his recruiting, in my humble opinion. His first few classes were really tough, really smart kids. I was there on campus when AA, JS, JF and the rest came in. Even before they played at all, there was a lot of talk on campus that these guys were all hard-asses. I remember people talking about JF saying he was going to start from day one, that they were going to win a championship. It was the attitude that UCLA needed. In my opinion, CBH got pretty lucky with these guys (well, he had some great assistants that are long gone that helped a lot). They came because they weren’t afraid of the challenge, they relished it. This happens a lot; new coach gets a bounce his first few years because everyone is hungry. Then you settle in for the long haul, people live on the reputation, assistants move one, winning consistently becomes much more difficult. I think CBH has tried to recruit the tough guys, but it has failed, AKA Reeves Nelson. The question is, if he can’t recruit guys with fire, can he make a fire burn within them…so far it would appear, no.
Like many "great" coaches
Howland is actually only great when he has the right guys for his system. In Howland’s case the right guys are:
Athletic 2s, 3s, and 4s with the ability to double team guards in the upper corners of the half court, hedge and recover on high picks, double big men on the baseline and recover quickly on helpside D (see AA, RW, LRMAM, AA2)
Talented play-making point guards with the ability to bail out the offense on bad possessions
4s and 5s that are quick enough to do all that is asked of them in a double-teaming man-to-man defense but also strong enough and scrappy enough to grab boards at a high rate
Good observations
If you are a big and can’t hedge in a Howland system, you are toast. the most curious part is why can’t Howland seems to get (or recognize) which players would do best in his system?
Perhaps unironically, Moser would probably fit the bill
But he gave up one of his defensive staples in exchange for inconsistent 3-point shooting. I doubt Moser would be any kind of savior, but when Dragovic clearly didn’t run the Howland defense, it not only killed the hopes of the 09-10 team, it also set a tone that it wasn’t necessary to execute Howland’s defense to get PT (see, Nelson, T. Wear, D. Wear).
Moser is just fantastic for the Rebels
Moser is everything Honeycutt seems to think he is. And he plays good D and rebounds exceptionally well. This continues to be baffling; how can Howland miss on players right in front of his face that would be perfect fits? How can we have faith in Howland to land the right recruits when he often can’t see the best talent on his own bench?
I don't get it either. But the damage has been done.
Stanback was inevitable. But Howland’s miss on Moser I feel has done irreparable (arguably) damage to this team. Dragovic over Moser showed the team that defense and rebounding don’t matter, that good shot clock management doesn’t matter when you’re one of Coach’s pets.
I don’t think the Wears are intentionally (or Dragovic, for that matter) doing what they do. I don’t think they go out there and intend to get away from Howland’s gameplan. But when the plan doesn’t work, they revert to their bad habits, and Howland coddles them by allowing them to continue their bad habits. Meanwhile, Stover and Lane (and Moser and Powell) make mistakes and are pulled immediately. It’s inconsistent, and has to be thoroughly maddening to a player. It’s also awful teaching.
But Howland’s miss on Moser I feel has done irreparable (arguably) damage to this team.
I find the loss of Moser possibly the biggest strike against Howland at this time.
Remember when Howland valued rebounds so much that whoever led the squad in them during practice would get the start?
Over
by cybermaldonado on Jan 2, 2012 4:53 PM PST up reply actions
It is Howland's fault that the personnel he has is incapable of (or unwilling to) running his system
He’s failed to land a PG since Holiday (2008) and won’t get one until 2013 at the earliest.
He’s had two disastrous classes (2008, 2009) that have left him with a roster that is clearly incapable of executing his schemes. That’s all on Howland.
Hopefully..
He turns it around. I think he’s a great coach, shitty luck with his players. I understand the whole “he created this mess” argument. I think the virulence from both the football debacle and Guerrass being the AD is spilling over to the simple lack of athleticism that we are seeing on the bball court. We just don’t have the horses. Is he responsible? Yes. Would we be on his ass if he regularly recruited “regular” 3-star blue-collar guys that he built his Pitt teams around? Yes, we would tear him apart of not recuiting with the Kentucky’s and Duke’s. So I believe he attempts, and at times succeeds, at recruiting the highest “star” and caliber players he can find, irrespective of whether they fit or not.
Unfortunately they either left early or just haven’t worked out. We all know how Calapari reloads. Williams got lucky with Barnes and co. staying otherwise NC is a nominal team as well. Is Howland a championship coach? Hopefully. Does he develop players or hold them back? All i know is he has put more players into the league than any other coach in the last several years. Only three of them (Farmar, Love, Holiday) were five-star by Scout.com. The others weren’t guaranteed locks for “The League”, so yes, he developed them. There are a ton of four star players every year, and Howland has put the most into the NBA during his UCLA tenure.
Let’s face it, his whole career at UCLA rests on Shabazz and Parker coming. If they come, and if this current team implodes, he’ll probably still be retained to straighten it out next year. If they don’t come, and he’s probably gone. The question is, can anyone name a REALISTIC hire (assuming DG is still AD) thats better than Howland? If DG is gone before Howland is gone, the sky is the limit with the new facilities.
So we'd be on him if he recruited "blue-collar" guys
Even though it’s on the backs of those blue collar guys that we had all of the success we did? Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? It’s the lack of blue collar guys, those grinders and hard workers, that have undermined the foundation of this program. Rather than filling the roster with Afflalos, Mata-Reals, Aboyas, and yes, even Loves (whose greatest strength is a decidedly blue collar statistic: rebounding), we’ve seen a parade of Dragovics, Smiths, Honeycutts, and Wears. The first group of players would beat up the second group of players, rub their noses in the dirt, and steal their lunch money.
Let’s also be clear: Star ratings and blue-collar are not mutually exclusive. Otherwise we wouldn’t see guys like Farmar, Afflalo, or Hansbrough out there doing work. Put to rest this ridiculous idea that this is all just an unlucky streak. You don’t get to where we are from where we’ve been because of luck. You get there by abandoning your principles, and you don’t get to do that for four years and keep your job.
Exactly. Afflalo and Farmar weren't diamonds in the rough or anything remotely like that
They too came in with a pedigree. The difference was in their mental focus and ability to utilize their talent. Their star ratings aren’t the problem, Howland’s seeming inability to discern which high schoolers are willing to work to succeed on the next level is.
Point taken..
I guess what I meant was if he was losing with lower caliber guys, but in a sense, this can be construed anyway you want it, cause it’s just been a complete flop, irrespective of “stars” or whatever. Hard to know how these kids are gonna turn out.
Bottom line: I don’t trust DG to hire BBall coach (still not sold on Mora), so if we are thinking of canning Howland, gotta can DG first!
Two things stand out to me right now
1. We need to have an effective zone. Even if Shabazz comes, this team is not getting any quicker. Anderson is not a quick player. And he (or even Shabazz) certainly can’t make up for the Wears or Smith. Even with Powell and Lamb leading the team next year, we won’t be a lock down M2M team. CBH needs to recognize this and develop the zone, now.
2. Smith is getting slimmer. I don’t know what he weighs now, but his arms definitely have more definition than earlier in the season. This sickens me, even though we all hoped he would slim down. It sickens me because this means that it isn’t a physical problem, he is active and practicing and playing and he is losing the weight. It is just another indictment that he could have done this during the off season. Ridiculous.
If Kyle Anderson can guard a power forward
(and I think his length, talent and b-ball IQ suggest that he can), then you could put together a very good man-to-man defense if Shabazz comes.
That is good news about Anderson
I have only seen a bit of video of him and it is hard to judge his defensive skills, but I was pretty sure most 3’s would really pose a problem for him in college. I don’t mean to be down on him, he is a great pickup and a loyal Bruin already, all the more reason why Howland needs to prepare in whatever way he needs to in order to see Anderson succeed.
Kyle Anderson...
..Based on the short video I saw of him .. he plays at a diesel pace and his lacks of lateral quickness moves does not bode well defensively..
Oh, and if anyone needs evidence that Bleacher Report is clueless
just read their latest on how to fix UCLA, one suggestion is both Wears in at the same time with Smith. Clueless. I won’t even both linking.
Kerry Keating was key
I know every assistant coach wants to have their own head coaching gig, but I wonder if Howland even tried to convince Keating to stay….or if Chianti Dan just failed to provide Howland enough salary for his assistants.
The problem with replacing how land
Frankly there isn’t a lot of saviors out there. Shaka smart has an eight year deal at VCU, Few is not leaving the zags, stevens is not leaving butler. Scott drew is unlikely to leave baylor and even if he did, be careful what you wish for: drew is one of the most unethical recruiters in the country and roundly despised by every coach in his conference. You’re really down to a guy like steve alfred – who is far from proven he can win a chamionship. Not to mention the two to three years lost renuilding the program after Anderson and Adams reconsider their commitment. As much as we’d love believe that every great coach wants to come to Westwood that’s not the case. The shadow of coach is pretty long. Howland has his issues, but he can win and coach. I say give him this year and the next to turn it around.
by triniboy on Jan 2, 2012 9:34 AM PST via mobile reply actions
Sorry
We are not going to be looking for a savior. If Howlnd doesn’t get it done this year, he will be toast recruiting wise and the program will only go down the gutter. He may come back if UCLA doesn’t have a new AD in place by March. However, if we get a new AD in next 6-8 weeks and UCLA is having a losing season in hoops, Howland will need to go and we will need to bring in a coach who will be a good fit. There are other coaches besides Shaka, Few and Scott Drew (too much ethical issues around his program anyway).
Wishful thinking
I know it would be wonderful to get a new ad in the the next two months, but it’s extremely unlikely the powers that be are going to can Danny boy right after letting him hire Mora. If the fire was that hot under his ass they would have sent him packing with Rick so the new ad could make the hire. Howland and Chianti will be there to open the “new” Pauley.
by triniboy on Jan 2, 2012 12:08 PM PST via mobile up reply actions
Reeves
Well Reeves Nelson played 12 minutes went 1 for 2 got 5 rebounds 1 blocked shot and 1 assist today in Lithuania
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