Ben Howland met with the beat reporters in his weekly presser today. Thanks to Edward Lewis from BruinSportsReport.com, who put up the full video of the presser:
I found some of Ben's comments pretty amusing. Here are the highlights:
- On "Expectations" at UCLA. Ben started that he "loves those expectations" and the expectations "drive" our players "to be the best they can be." He then went on to mention that he feels "good and confident" about the team but the "biggest challenge" is "staying healthy." Sorry Ben, you don't get to use injury excuse in case something happens to your top-7 in your 8 men team. It's you who drove guys like Tyler Lamb, Joshua Smith, Anthony Stover and others off the program. You don't get to use the injury excuse in case we face that issue.
- Offensive rebounding: Ben identified "offensive rebounding" as one of the most important areas that team needs to improve on. Well, in that case it'd make sense to have little bit less of Wears, who don't seem to care all that about rebounding and try out the freshman talent who has the physical talent to focus on that aspect of the game? Right?
- Re. Tony Parker's discontent with Howland's program: Ben offered up a lot of
bullshitcoachspeak about how Tony Parker "has been great" and talking up how he has been taking yoga, completely side-stepping the question whether he is actually happy in his dead program. - Parker "beating up" Travis Wear at practice: Howland also said Parker was "beating up" Travis at practice today [comment at 12:12 minute mark of the video]. Well, I guess we will find out what happens on Thursday and Saturday. If practice performance is rewarded by mins, one would expect Parker getting lot more mins during this coming road trip. Right?
- Larry Drew II: Everyone must have read up DC Bruins' post from yesterday because they were all asking Ben questions about LDII. It will be interesting to see what LD II does when he is required to do more than just passing up shots
Those were the main notes that stuck out to me. If there are other notes that were interesting to you, feel free to chime in the comment thread or if you have extended thoughts, share them in a fanpost.
GO BRUINS.