MTSU Steamrolls UCLA's Rotting Carcass of a Program: 86-66

Joshua Smith rebounded from his Twitter incident to dominate down low with 15 points.

Norman Powell finally got in the game and showed flashes of brilliance, nabbing 9 more.

Those are your Bruin highlights, folks. If these two are not starting our next game, this season might as well be over.

In Middle Tennessee State's 86-66 dismantling of Ben Howland's joke of a program in front of 29 people at the Sports Arena, the program has managed to achieve lows not seen since the Lavin era. The best thing that happened to me was getting called into work tonight, and thus when the online stream went down, so did my torture. For the rest of you poor saps who were subjected to the remainder of the 15 minutes of garbage time, my condolences, and to those smart enough to avoid this steaming pile altogether, here are some of the numbers/facts(after the jump).

MTSU employed a variety of defenses, mixing them up from possession to possession. A 1-3-1 halfcourt trap here. A 2-3 zone there. Occasional flashes of man to man. And the Bruins were utterly confused against all of it. No ball movement. No player movement. No spacing. No chance.

Interior defense for UCLA is horrendous. The complete lack of awareness of our frontline to backdoor action was exploited heavily by MTSU, and given the dribble penetration we allow so readily and easily, the need for zone has never been more clear. It's not like we could possibly give up more rebounds the way that the Wears "box out".

Every MTSU player that took a shot hit 50% or better. Every. Single. One.

MTSU was 9-9 from beyond the arc at one point. A magical level of shooting to be sure, and an NCAA record until some idiot missed one. I guess the Bruins figured they might as well not close out...so they didn't. That would require pride, heart, and effort.

MTSU shot 70% in the first half...and then shot better in the second half.

Honestly, I had notes on this game to relay, but I think the above is a good dissection of the lifeless rotting corpse that is the UCLA Basketball program. For the first time ever, I'm glad Coach isn't around, just so he doesn't have to see this.

I guess that's one way to put the Reeves Nelson drama behind us, eh?

Up next: Chaminade is chomping at the bit to shovel some more dirt on this bad boy.