His senior season was not supposed to end on the bench. Then
again, this year has been marked by the unexpected for T.J.
Cummings.
One of the biggest surprises for Cummings was his mother’s
decision to move from Illinois to Brentwood to help him get back on
track and back on the court while he was academically
ineligible.
“My mom was big for me, coming out here,” Cummings
said. “I got to spend some time at home, had home-cooked
meals again, and just got to hang out with her.
“I had some love out here.”
Cummings, who is from Homewood, Ill., only saw his mother,
Vondell, twice a year during his three previous seasons at UCLA.
Her arrival was welcomed with open arms. She attended every home
game the Bruins played, which Cummings said was an enormous help to
him, not only while he sat out the first five games of the season
due to academic ineligibility, but right up to Saturday’s
75-60 loss to Notre Dame.
Especially since it was not the storybook ending to what could
have been a senior season fairy tale.
Despite yells from the student section of “We want
T.J.,” coach Ben Howland cited Cummings’ difficulties
guarding Notre Dame’s four-guard scheme as his main reason
for taking him out with just over a minute to go in the second
half. Cummings did not start the second half and played a
season-low 21 minutes.
“It was a poor match-up for him to be able to
defend,” Howland said.
Cummings had an especially hard time containing the Fighting
Irish’s Tom Timmermans, who scored a career-high 20 points.
At one point in the second half, Timmermans easily eluded Cummings,
pivoting under the basket in a direction Cummings clearly
wasn’t expecting, getting an easy layup.
Cummings’ offense was similarly mediocre, and he finished
the night 5-of-11 from the field. His mind frequently appeared
elsewhere during certain plays, like one with 2:20 to go, when he
charged a Notre Dame player under the basket and air-balled a
layup.
He didn’t want to talk about the game afterward, and
instead of attending the de rigeur press conference, he spent time
signing programs and snapping pictures with fans who were as sad to
see him go as the look in his eyes said he was.
And, of course, he hugged his mother.
“For my senior night, I knew she’d make an effort to
be here,” Cummings said. “But for the whole season …
I never thought she’d see all of it here.”