Bumped. GO BRUINS. - BN Eds.

I was at the South Bay Bruins "Meet Jim Mora Jr." evening Tuesday, May 15th at the Automobile Driving Museum (cool place) in El Segundo, near LAX.

There was a pretty good turnout...drinks for sale, small silent auction, display for the Rose Bowl luxury seating, then about a one-hour talk by Mora.

Mora is very energetic and engaging, and clearly knows how to say the right things. He talked about his commitment to make the alumni, fans, and supporters proud to walk around Los Angeles wearing UCLA gear. He pointedly called u$c "Southern Cal."

He talked about each coach in detail, the recruiting process, and what he calls the "Bruin Filter" they use when looking for players. Twice he mentioned building a fence around Los Angeles in terms of recruiting, and that he hears the perception that UCLA gets the players who Southern Cal doesn’t want but he wants to quickly make sure it is the other way around.

Read on for a few highlights.

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UPDATE (R): Go ahead and use this as the open thread for this mid-day baseball game too. Crazy (the good kind of crazy) day in UCLA athletics so let's hope everyone can keep it rolling. Go Bruins!

There is a lot more post-season action from our Bruin squads today, so let's get on it!

The Men's Golf Team will play round two of the NCAA Central Regional yesterday at The Club at Olde Stone in Bowling Green, KY. The top seeded Bruins had a great day yesterday during round one, finishing at four under par as a team, and leading second place Colorado State and Chattanooga by a whopping 10 strokes. The top 5 teams will advance to the NCAA Champioships, so the Bruins have put themselves in a great position to start. Pedro Figueiredo is tied with one other player for the overall lead at -4 and teammate Patrick Cantlay is just one shot behind at -3. The top two players from the regional will advance to the NCAA Championships for individual play.

Round two will get underway for our Bruins today at 6:10 am PT. Don't worry, the sun is up out east by that time. Once again, golfstat.com will have live team scores and individual scores.

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UPDATE (N): Manfro is now on ESPN's college football home page:

Bruce Feldman recently wrote a post titled Top 10: The Most Pleasant Surprise Players of the Spring, in which he looked at players who looked poised to have breakout seasons after emerging in the Spring. Any guesses on which unheralded player from UCLA made the list?

You guessed it. We've chronicled how Manfro Mania hit Westwood this Spring, and now it has apparently gone national. The 5'11, 195 lbs. "powerfully built" tailback received some pretty high praise from Bruce Feldman:

3. Steven Manfro, UCLA, RB/WR/KR: If Bruins fans hadn't heard about the redshirt freshman before spring, they almost certainly did by the end of UCLA's spring game when the 5-10, 190-pounder lit up the Rose Bowl making big play after big play. It's crazy to think that the guy who had almost 3,500 rushing and receiving yards and 39 TDs from scrimmage his senior year in Southern California at Valencia High only had offers from Wyoming and UCLA. The new Bruins staff is lucky to have him though. Manfro, who lists Maurice Jones-Drew and Danny Woodhead as his favorite athletes, has earned the nickname "the White Mamba" for his exploits on the field. UCLA coaches say Manfro - pegged as more quick than fast -- "flashed" in every practice they had and can be a line-up-all-over the field difference-maker as well as game-breaker for all of the Quick Game stuff new OC Noel Mazzone wants to run. The kid's family also has an amazing backstory, as detailed here by Fox's Lisa Horne.

"I'm excited about him," says Mazzone, who has a strong group of weapons out of the backfield that also include Jonathan Franklin and Jordon James. "He's a perfect hybrid for what we do. He can run routes. He's flexible enough to get in the slot. He's a back that can run in between the tackles and can play in the slot."

I like Mazzone's comments about Manfro's ability as a hybrid player. Players that can line up in the slot and in the backfield, especially if they can run between tackles, is a defensive coordinator's nightmare. Of course, Spring excitement is common, and has often been followed by Fall disappointment, but it's easy to root for a guy like Manfro.

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As a season ticket holder, I was offered the opportunity to take a tour of Pauley Pavilion today and went to see where my seats would be and just how the new stadium looked. The seats have not been put in, there is no floor yet, no video screens or stat boards, but to sum it up in one word, new Pauley looks great.

The outside and new concourse that surrounds it is beautiful and modern, making the Bruin's home look like a real college basketball arena. Our tour guide-who has been involved in the renovation of Pauley for six years-told us all about how the concourse will be filled with memorabilia and facts about UCLA athletics. The entire stadium will be filled with blue and gold to give it a more UCLA feel. There are real concessions stands with a variety of food and finally, a real merchandise store.

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A pair of our top ranked programs continue their post season drives today.

The Number 3 ranked Men's Golf Team is in Bowling Green KY today for the NCAA Central Regional. The Bruins are the top seeded team in the Regional which will be played today, Friday, and Saturday. The top 5 teams, and top 2 individual players, will advance to the NCAA Championships which will be held, very conveniently, just down the road from Westwood at Riviera Country Club in two weeks. The Bruins will feature the nation's top amateur in Patrick Cantlay (So), along with teammates Anton Arboleda (So), Pedro Figueiredo (Jr), Pontus Widegren (Jr), and Alex Shi Yup Kim (Sr). Widegren will tee off first at 8am ET with one teammate following in each of the next four groups. Tee times can be seen here.

Golfstat.com will carry live scoring for the teams here and for the individuals here.

Also, our Number 1 ranked Women's Tennis Team meets unseeded Rice in the Round of 16 of the NCAA Tournament. The University of Georgia is host to this year's mens and women's tournament, and our men's team will be in action there tomorrow. The Bruins advanced to the Round of 16 by beating beating Eastern Kentucky and Long Beach State in their 2 previous regional matches last weekend. If U.C.L.A. advances past Rice, they will play the winner of Cal-Georgia Tech in the quarterfinals on Saturday. Today's matches begin at 9am ET.

If the Bruins start the same lineup we saw last weekend, we will see the singles lineup featuring Robin Anderson (Fr) at #1, McCall Jones (Sr) at #2, Pamela Montez (Jr) at #3, Skylar Morton (Fr) at #4, Chanelle Van Nguyen (Fr) at #5, and Carling Seguso (Sr) at #6. The doubles parings will be Anderson and Morton at #1, Courtney Dolehide (So) and Montez at #2, and Jones and Seguso at #3.

The complete tournament schedule and links to live scoring and video streams can be found here.

This is our Thursday open thread, so jump in and cheer on our Bruins!

Thought I share this because this topic has come up a number of times on BN.

Tim Rogers from the "FrontBurner" (described as a "daily conversation about Dallas") really wanted to get to the bottom of the allegation concerning former tWWL college football blowhard, Joe McCoy like evil-wackjob football Dad ala Craig James purportedly killed fiver hookers at SMU.

So few days ago he called Craig James' campaign office in Dallas to get to the bottom of the story about James and the five dead hookers. The "campaign" directed him to James' spokesperson in Austin, Meredith Turney.

You will have to go hear to find out about the exchange between Rogers and the Craig "campaign" spokesperson talking about dead hookers and other stuff. We will let you decide whether the case has been closed.

GO BRUINS.

It has been documented here that Gene Block believes the public face of UCLA is not athletics, but rather the medical center. It appears that UCLA's PR team has done a pretty decent job in keeping a story regarding discrimination in the workplace out of the local (and perhaps national) news.

As reported in the Times on 4/20/12:

A UCLA physician has filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the UC Board of Regents, alleging that he was routinely publicly humiliated and once was depicted as a gorilla being sodomized in a slide show presentation during a resident graduation event.

In a 40-page complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday [4/17/12], Dr. Christian Head, a head and neck surgeon, accused the university of failing to prevent discrimination, harassment and retaliation.

The Times' article is quite short and doesn't go beyond very general information, mostly from the PR guy from UCLA and select quotes from the plaintiff Dr. Christian Head, an African-American surgeon in the Head and Neck Department and associate professor in the medical school. Dr. Head elected to bypass a meeting with the Academic Senate committee regarding the alleged workplace mistreatment and instead filed a lawsuit against the Board of Regents and two specific UCLA Medical School faculty members, Marilene Wang, a tenured professor, and Gerald Berke, the department chair.

The available details around the incident are disturbing and Gene Block's alleged lack of action around it raise more questions about his ability to lead UCLA.

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Bumped. Good discussion. - BN Eds.

via faniq.com

Hopefully we see more of this next season.

Hey BN community,

I am a long time Bruin fan and follower of BN since the woes of Doh-rell. I attended almost all UCLA football home games, and many away games (including at Knoxville!) with my family from birth till I moved away for college.

For a final project in my "Future of News" journalism seminar class, I must write an article analyzing the timeline of a news media outlet. I have chosen SB Nation and I want to tell the story from three angles: SB Nation's main staff, editors, and the consumers/fans. I have already emailed some of the editors here at BN (although I couldn't find any contact info for you Nestor), but I am looking for some info from Bruin fans like you reading this message right now! What do you think of sports blog coverage from the fan's point of view versus mainstream media coverage? How often do you come to BruinsNation and what do you think makes it (or other sites like it) more successful! If you are interested in answering a few more questions, please email me at ascohen@wesleyan.edu and I would love to hear your thoughts. Otherwise, fire away in the comments and thanks so much for any feedback!

Sincerely,

Andrew aka "PopnFried"

4everBruin fanshotted a really heart warming article on this year spring football's internet sensation - Steve Manfro. Manfro has emerged as one of the most interesting storylines of recent UCLA football offseason thanks to consistent praise from pretty much every practice and spring ball observers.

We consistently keep preaching about how folks should stay guarded with cautious optimism given how we have gotten our hearts broken and soul crushed year after year (well pretty much every seven season of this blog's existence). That said it's still pretty fun to read about a kid who at least publicly oozes humility to accompany his reported showstopping performance on the practice field.

The latest piece from Lisa Horne (a Trojan alum) on Manfro will only endear him to UCLA fans as she shares the story of his Dad's 9/11 heroics as a New York police officer and his family's transition to Southern California since that terrible tragedy. As much as I liked the story though, I do think it is important for UCLA fans to not see Manfro as some kind "feel good" story ala "Rudy." The only thing Manfro has in common with Rudy is that the lead actor of Rudy - Sean Austin - is an UCLA alum. That is it.

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ESPN has a nice little interview of Travis Wear. Travis says all the right things and confirms what Stover has said earlier. The returning players are happy to have the #1 recruiting class and anxious for the competition.

That's how you get better. You come and out compete every day for minutes. That's what makes teams great, being able to compete in practice. Then in the games you execute what you've been practicing all along. With Josh and my brother and Tony Parker and(Anthony) Stover ... we'll have some battles. It should be fun.

Stover previously tweeted something similar.

But to me the biggest news is confirmation of what we have rumored about UCLA's too big man Josh Smith.

Josh has been working out every day. He hasn't missed any workouts. He's grinding every day with us. It's nice just to see how hard he's been working. He has an opportunity to be great. To see him embracing that now is awesome.

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