Oh, November in Southern California.
Feel that chill, 80-degree weather.
Listen to the squirrels frittering in their perma-green
trees.
Smell those barbecues.
Ah yes, the Southern California November is, well, a lot like
every other month in Southern California, except for one key
difference: It’s the start of UCLA basketball season.
And November and UCLA basketball invariably means one thing:
uncomfortable wins over mediocre teams. Last year it was a
one-point victory over Drexel and a two-point win against
Wagner.
Wednesday night in Pauley Pavilion was no different. The
seemingly easy 82-69 victory by the Bruins over BYU masked the fact
that the Cougars actually held a three-point advantage after the
first half.
That is UCLA November basketball.
The only difference between this and previous years is that the
Bruins’ gameplay couldn’t really be called lethargic.
They seemed to be playing pretty intense defense, and their offense
was, for the most part, the normal half-court,
pass-the-ball-around-until-there-is-an-open-layup/desperation-3-point-attempt
offense. The main reason for the deficit at the half appeared to be
that the “guard white guys on the perimeter” corollary
of general defensive philosophy doesn’t take into account the
fact that sometimes five white guys are on the court rolling the
ball around behind the arc.
The Cougars went into halftime having missed just one 3-point
attempt in nine shots. Most of those shots came either as the
Cougar player was moving, or when he had a hand in his face.
“They shot lights out,” UCLA coach Ben Howland said.
“I don’t know that there’s a better shooting team
in the country than BYU. If there is, I’d like to see them.
… They did a great job of making tough shots.”
If the Cougars had come out in the second half shooting as they
did in the first half, they likely would have come out of Pauley
with a victory. But generally, shooting 8-of-9 from 3-point range
while guarded is not an easy feat, and it is even harder to
duplicate.
Here’s the rub, though: Teams are going to do some crazy
things like that against UCLA this year. This is not the Lavin
years. This is not Howland’s first couple of years. UCLA is
No. 6 in the nation. When teams come into Pauley Pavilion, they are
going to be fired up. Look at those BYU players taunting the crowd
and knocking down the UCLA players (see Josh Shipp’s last
layup attempt). They weren’t scared, they were excited.
I’m not saying the three upcoming consecutive games
(against Long Beach State, UC Riverside, and Cal State Fullerton)
make up a murderer’s row of non-conference teams. But you can
reasonably expect at least one of those games to be a lot closer
than it should be.
Although Kansas is tremendously overrated at No. 3 in the
nation, the Jayhawks’ loss to Oral Roberts last night shows
how difficult these early, seemingly unimportant non-conference
games against average opponents can be.
Luckily for the Bruins, in this game the hot-shooting ended. And
with the quality of perimeter defenders the Bruins have, the hot
shooting will usually end.
And that, if anything, is what you can take away from this
season opener. Come tournament time, the Bruins will stand a top
seed’s best chance of not being knocked off by a hot-shooting
high seed, thanks to that perimeter defense.
And you can also take away from this game that Luc Richard Mbah
a Moute and Darren Collison are really good.
E-mail David at dwoods@media.ucla.edu if you think someone
should maybe start mopping the court in Pauley.