UCLA Basketball Destroyed by North Carolina: 78-56

The stats do not show how truly awful this UCLA 78-56 loss to North Carolina was.  UCLA was leading early.  Then when UCLA got into it's bench, the game was over.

As I said before the Battle for Atlantis, I did not think we would do well because this team is not built to play games back to back let alone three in a row.  UCLA has no bench.  It is so bad that the positive off the bench was G Goloman who did not embarrass himself and stopped a 3 on 1.  Goloman's performance may have moved himself to eighth in the rotation.

How bad is the bench?  One bench player was so bad a good play was an air ball as that meant he at least caught the pass as he twice missed easy passes.    (In fairness, Thomas Welsh had a couple nice plays on offense late.)

The problem on the bench means it is tough to take people out and goes over to the starters.  Steve Alford tried to rest and take Bryce off the ball with the result that Isaac Hamilton had a career high 7 turnovers.  Also, for the first time Bryce was completely exposed.  North Carolina's  J.P. Tokoto was too much for Bryce.  In part Bryce was tired.  In part Bryce was out manned.

Isaac Hamilton was in and out on his first shot and it was downhill from there.  The combination of Isaac and Bryce was awful.  Hamilton was 0-6 and Bryce 3-10.

But what may have been worse than the turnovers was the complete lack of passes.  Bryce and Norman seemed to at times just duck their head and go at the basket.  Norman drew a lot of fouls but also made a season high 5 turnovers.  Bryce just made 6 turnovers (to 3 assists).

The stat of the game for UCLA was 7 assists to 23 turnovers.

On the positive side, Parker did okay against North Carolina bigs.  Kevon Looney was again the best player on the court again but hardly played because of foul trouble. (He was a plus 7 in plus minus in a game we lost be 22!)   He got his fourth on the first play of the second half and North Carolina was off to the races.

UCLA plays again tomorrow night at 7:30.  Can a tired UCLA play even win the seventh-eight place game?  Can the bench contribute?

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