UCLA 55, Washington State 73 : Alford Embarrasses the Four Letters

UCLA went to Pullman in what would be an easy yet important game. Instead, Steve Alford's team lost to the worst team in the PAthetiC-12, possibly losing a secured seeding in the west and losing a chance to move into the top 25.

Washington State entered this game ranked 11^th or 12^th in the PAthetiC-12 in all of the following categories:  Scoring Offense (12^th), Scoring Margin (11^th), Free Throw Pct (12^th), Field Goal Pct (12^th),  Field Goal Defense (11^th),  3 Pt Defense (12^th), Rebounding Offense (12^th), Rebounding Margin (11^th), Blocked Shots (12^th),  Assists (12^th), Assist/Turnover Ratio (12^th),  Defensive Rebounds (12^th),  Offensive Rebounding Pct. (11^th),  yet Steve Alford managed to once again embarrass the four letters by "leading" our team to lose yet another game to an inferior team.

Things could be different this season.  We could be in the top 15 and could have won the conference.  Instead Alford's team lost away games we should have won: Oregon State, Utah, Stanford, and now Washington State. These games should have been easy victories but we slept through them and lost. FYI: does that have something to do with coaching? Victories in these games would have put the Bruins at 27-4 (top 15?), and would have put us at 16 and 2 in the PAthetiC-12 winning the conference outright.

About the game.  The Bruins led 15-5 when Alford made his scheduled "high energy" substitution and put in Bryce.  It was all down hill from there.  At the half the Bruins were down 26-34.  UCLA shot only 33% against worst in the Pac-12 shooting percentage Cougars who shot  40%.  At the end of the game, UCLA was shooting 31%.

Maybe I should have listened to the wisdom of Fox 71:

The game starts at 11:00 back here in Geezerville and the time change is tonight and we lose an hour and Mrs. Fox 71 and I have to get up early for church and we're playing our second road game on a weekend and we never win the second road game on a weekend and we're playing against a team with nothing to lose and we are a team with nothing to gain and eventually Wazzou is going to get lucky and if they get lucky the guy currently in charge of our team is not at all unlike the football coach we had before Coach Neuheisel and the game isn't on TV anyhow and the movies on TV are really lousy and I downloaded a nice Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe book from the library and I'll probably just skip the game tonight and read.

Here is the box score.

The Bruins end up (23-8, 12-6 Pac-12) instead of (27-4. 16-2) as they head in to the tourney and then on to March Madness ... feel it.

Let the conversation continue!