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The Hoosier Loser has struck out on all recruiting fronts since coming to UCLA as he has been unable to land a single point guard or a blue chip recruit without any baggage. His only recruits is a local guy whose first choice was Timmeh Floyd's UTEP program (and not wanted by Southern Cal), a project who bailed from Texas Tech with academic baggage and his son, who didn't have any offer from a credible D-1 program.
There is no interest or buzz around Chianti and TRA's basketball program except for the usual dead-enders (the Howlers, Neubs, Blindos and Lavinstas of the world) who are the "support the program at all cost without any question" types. But the news is not all bad for Alfie. As noted by Trevor Lowry on RantSpots, Chianti basically gifted Alford with a cup-cake schedule that should enable him to start 8-0:
The UCLA Bruins don't have the toughest non-conference schedule in college basketball, but they also do not have the easiest one. Regardless, they should start the season off by going 8-0.
UCLA very well could extend that winning streak, but it will play eight very manageable games in a row to start off the season. With that said, the Bruins did get upset by Cal Poly last season, so who knows if they will get upset early on in the upcoming one. That could happen, though, considering that this team will be losing leading scorer Shabazz Muhammad and will have a new head coach.
Eh, in this case the losing a 20 year old ballhog maybe addition by subtraction.
But wait there is more. As gbruin noted earlier this year while going over our schedule, UCLA is going to be set-up nicely during conference season as well because due to Pac-12's new setup Bruins are going to skip the Arizona road-trip. Get that Chianti's wonder boy - TRA - will not have to deal with the crowd at Tucson this season.
So basically UCLA has an OOC schedule against only one elite team - Duke. I guess we will have another one against Missouri on the road but the Tigers tend to be over-rated. And with returning talent like Kyle Anderson and Jordan Adams, Bruins are well position to head into its mediocre conference schedule with perhaps just 1 or 2 loss, and then will get to avoid the toughest road-game all together.
Alfie - if he is any good - is well positioned to put together a monster year with this cupcake schedule, which should position UCLA with a high seed and head at least to the Steve-16 (which is not much of an accomplishment). It will be interesting to see whether Alfie can take advantage of this cupcake schedule and then build on it by putting together an elite recruiting class - worth of those four letters - instead of embarrassing himself like he has done to date.
GO BRUINS.