So Wisconsin goes down to Ohio State and North Carolina falls on the road at College Park. Florida lost earlier on Saturday. I expect the Bruins to jump to Number 2 when a the rankings come out later today. However, keep in mind though even though Bruins are not getting much love from the on set "pundits" appearing on CBS and ESPN, they are getting lot of love (as of right now) around the internets from websites of those aforementioned networks. For example, CBS’s Garry Parrish has the Bruins as his number 1 team in America. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has the Bruins as the number 1 seed out West and over all number 1 seed in the tourney. And CNNSI’s Luke Wynn has the Bruins as the number 1 team in SI.com’s college basketball power rankings. At this point I think the Bruins are fairly certain to get the number 1 seed out West barring a total collapse in these last two regular season games and the conference tourney. But still it won’t matter much if the Bruins don’t keep building on the progress of last few weeks. Anyways, I have few more notes to share to kick off this week.
I talked all last week about how if UCLA swept their last home stand it would be the first time since 1974-75 season the Bruins have gone undefeated at Pauley. Here is Dohn with the followup on our undefeated record at home:
UCLA's nonconference home schedule this season consisted of Long Beach State, UC Riverside, Cal State Fullerton, Oakland, Sam Houston State and Michigan.
In 1974-75, the nonconference home schedule was Wichita State, DePaul, Loyola-Chicago, Oklahoma State, Memphis State, Davidson, Oklahoma and UC Santa Barbara.
UCLA is officially credited with being undefeated at home during the 1994-95 season as well, but did lose at Pauley to California, which later was forced to forfeit the game.
"When I got here, the program was definitely in the rebuilding process," said UCLA junior center Lorenzo Mata, who finished with eight points and four rebounds in a career-high 33 minutes. "I definitely think we're one of the elite teams now. We still have a lot of things to work on, and that's what we'll do, but we're only going to get better from here on."
In other news Kevin Love is an McDonald All American. It was pretty much a formality at this point. BBR has the details.
Lastly, Dohn in one of his reports had this teaser on AA:
"You know that the possibility is there," Afflalo said.
"But I'm so focused on the now and what I had to do to beat Stanford, I never thought, `This is my last game, let me go do what I have to do.' It's not what I play for, and all those decisions come with time."
Sources close to Afflalo said there is a chance he could return for a senior season - and UCLA is not actively recruiting anyone to fill his scholarship - but he and his father, Benjamin, said after the game a decision will not be made until UCLA's participation in the NCAA Tournament is complete.
Bruins have a brutal road trip coming up to finish off the regular season. Washington State is going to look to make a national statement when they host the Bruins on Thursday. Those guys still have a good shot at tying the Bruins for a share of the Pac-10 title, which would be an incredible accomplishment for them, while the Huskies will try to make one last stand to save their season on Saturday. It is not going to be easy. But as keep repeating seemingly every day if the Ben Ball warriors come out intense, focused, and keyed up on defense, it will all lead to another happy ending here on BN.
GO BRUINS.