UCLA 75 Washington 69: Ben’s NIT Bruins Get an "Exciting" W Against Poorly Coached Huskies

It's over. Thankfully another dreadful regular season in Ben's joke program has come to an end. UCLA closed out one of the most pathetic season in the program history by pulling out a victory against mediocre Washington team at the Garbage arena. Bruins pulled out an "exciting" win at their last "home" game with a "nail-biting" 75-69 win. Here is the boxscore.

Tyler Lamb was easily the game MVP for the Bruins finishing with 14 points. More impressive that Lamb's offensive output was the pressure he was generating on the defensive end with 4 steals. Lazeric Jones as he usually is was the leading scorer with 20 points as he had himself a solid "Senior Day." Travis Wear had a solid game with 16 points and 11 rebounds. Bruins as a team outrebounded the Huskies 36 to 32. Joshua Smith was actually awake during this game converting some important buckets as he scored 9 points. Shout out also goes to Norman Powell, who made a difference in the second half as he contributed with 7 points off the bench.

Bruins finish the regular season with a pathetic record of 18-13 with a record of 11-7 in the worst major D-1 conference in the country. Speaking of the PAthetiC-12, the fact that the Huskies (21-9, 14-4) have tied for the regular season championship is an indictment of this joke conference. It also underscores the lost opportunity for UCLA as it blew number of winnable games and cost itself a tourney bid, due to Howland's stubborn and bad coaching decisions throughout the season.

The game itself ugly as it featured two really poorly coached teams. We came out looking the usual undisciplined mess. We also looked embarrassingly lazy on the defensive end early on national TV, which was punctuated by a sequence during which we gave up a fast-break layup, after scoring one of our own. You could sense the gasp and frustration coming out of Reggie Miller, who was doing color for this game.

Bruins are lucky that the Huskies are not a very well coached ball club. If they were, the scoreboard would have looked lot uglier for the "home team." Thanks to the sloppy play and no defense from a classic Romar "coached" team, the game was close at the half as Washington was up by 47-44. I guess the Huskies thought they were going to cruise to the PAthetiC-12 regular season title by playing their patented jungle ball. It didn't work out that way as thanks to efforts of Lamb, Powell and Smith, the Bruins made a big run in the second half taking 63-62 lead with 8:31 left in the game.

From there on the game became a battle of who could turn the ball over more. Each team finished with 28 TOs. Eventually the Bruins hung on for a 75-69 win. Somehow this game was nationally broadcast on CBS. I guess everyone likes checking into a train-wreck. The CBS team including Reggie spent much of the broadcast making excuses for Howland and blurting out the official talking points. The TPs including the usual making it all about Reeves Nelson and ignoring the serious issues that have destroyed the foundation of the UCLA program.

In terms of "looking ahead," I am sure there will be chat of chasing after unicorns an NCAA dance ticket with an improbable run in the Pac-12 tournament. That chatter is as delusional as Chianti's blogging about the football team in the hunt for a Rose Bowl appearance by playing in the "Pac-12 championship" game this season. But hey, if the Howlers want to dream ... let them be. Today's exciting "victory" probably means hosting a humiliating appearance in the NIT.

This is your post game thread.

GO BRUINS.