I often wonder what criteria the Daily Bruin management/chief editors use when they hire student writers/columnists for their sports section. Yes, I know the sports section is kind of a joke. I wrote off these cheese eating surrender monkeys a long time ago when they were celebrating a loss to Southern Cal (in our home stadium) as one of the greatest sports accomplishment of 2004-05 season.
I don't link or share any articles from the Daily Bruin because they are not worth sharing. But, once in a while, you read a comment or observation so incredibly off-base, moronic and just flat out embarrassing (because these guys still represent our alma mater's campus newspaper after all) that it is worth exposing to the entire Bruin community.
I give you David Woods, who apparently is a member of the "Daily Bruin Senior Staff." Mr. Woods had this piece of wisdom to share in an article he wrote up (per his own admission) 8 minutes after last night's game:
That all actually sounds like explanation for the inexplicable.
This is just wrong on so many levels.
It's pretty clear that this student version of Bill Plaschke is as clueless about the sport as the one the Trojan Times subjects us to every week.
Out-coached? If this clown knew anything about the nuances of the game, he'd know that Stanford runs a 1-4 offense, and they didn't really switch up any of their offensive sets from the first half to the second. There wasn't much in terms of adjustments Coach Howland could have made considering Stanford was running pretty much the same offense through the whole game. There isn't much Coach Howland could have done to off-set the fact that Stanford was running a lot of isolation plays, taking our guys off the dribble.
Most importantly, Woods mentions nothing about how the officiating impacted the game. And no I am not talking about the fouls on Mata, Aboya, and Luc. I had no problems with the fouls the refs were calling around the rum. However, I am talking about the touch fouls the officials were calling on our guards around the perimeter, which they were not calling in the first half. It clearly impacted our game and had an effect on the suffocating pressure DC, Shipp, AA and co. were putting on Stanford guards in the first half. Moreover, there wasn't much our guys could do when Stanford guards were making 3 pointers on bank shots with hands on their faces. So to blame Howland for not making defensive adjustments in the second half is just ridiculous.
As for his dig on Ryan Wright (who BTW did provide pretty decent mins. against team featuring good bigs such as TA&M, Washington, and Kentucky) on not being capable of playing big minutes, the clown ought to look at himself in the mirror, and he would discover that he is not capable of writing a concise, well thought out sports column. Case in point, check out the column he wrote after UCLA's football's loss against Washington. No where in his observations he didn't mention anything about Willingham and co. out-coaching Karl Dorrell.
In any event, if you want to write Daily Bruin about this idiot, I'd suggest you contact/email Daily Bruin's Editor-in-Chief Jeff Schenck at jschenck@media.ucla.edu (and at editor@media.ucla.edu). In addition, email sports editor Bobby Gordon at bgordon@media.ucla.edu. Fill up their email boxes folks.
It is just embarrassing that a "senior" sports writer of the student newspaper of the best public university in the country, featuring one of the greatest athletic program in college sports, can write such a misinformed, ignorant article on its hallmark sports program. Time to let them know how they have become a joke. Perhaps they can be chastened before they move on to real jobs. Maybe this could be a wake up call for them before they completely evolve into (it may be too late) the Bill Plaschke of next generation.
GO BRUINS.