“Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit
before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18.
I’m not sure how true that is in general, but I really
like applying the Bible to everyday life, so here goes.
UCLA lost to Oregon on Saturday because of its pride. It
wasn’t the turnovers, it wasn’t the poor shooting, it
wasn’t the crowd, and it wasn’t lack of defensive
intensity. Those were all symptoms of the greater problem from the
game: the excessive pride of the Bruin players and coaches.
Looking at the game as a whole, you can easily see that the
biggest problem from the game was matching up against
Oregon’s quick lineup. The Ducks were running basically four
guards for much of the game, plus a big man (Maarty Leunen) who can
face up and knock down shots from three.
If you follow UCLA basketball, you can see how this poses a
problem.
The starting lineup of the Bruins is not exactly what
you’d call quick. Arron Afflalo and Josh Shipp are both below
average at their positions in terms of quickness.
This began to show itself to be a problem in the game when
Oregon’s Aaron Brooks basically just drove at will to the
basket because no one was quick enough to stop him. UCLA had two
choices: run a zone or change the players.
It was coach Ben Howland’s pride and stubbornness that
kept this from happening.
He runs a man-to-man defense. That is his staple. And for the
most part, it has been effective. But in this game, where Leunen
consistently pulled Lorenzo Mata out to the perimeter, there were
open driving lanes all the way to the basket because all the UCLA
defenders were pulled out to the perimeter. Against a quick team,
that is fatal.
Howland did not change to a zone. I refuse to believe that the
guy who got UCLA to the title game last year is stupid, or unaware,
so I can only assume it was stubbornness that had him sticking with
man-to-man
Fine, say I. Stick to man-to-man. But if you’re going to
do that, you have to have a quicker lineup on the floor. A lineup
of, say, Darren Collison, Russell Westbrook, Arron Afflalo, Josh
Shipp, and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute.
This did not happen.
Mata was still playing significant minutes in the second half,
in which he was too slow to guard Leunen and had a sudden attack of
Michael Fey hands.
Westbrook, who did an excellent job in the minutes he had what
with jumping passing lanes and being aggressive against
Oregon’s matchup zone, got only 13 minutes in the game.
Again, I can only assume pride was an issue.
Howland must have seen that his team’s quickness could not
match Oregon’s. I could see it, and I’m not the head
coach of the (soon-not-to-be) No. 1 team in the nation. So if he
wasn’t going to change the scheme, then putting players in
who could actually be successful in man-to-man would have been the
next best bet.
Pride is good. I like it. I like that after the game Afflalo
said that he had expected to go undefeated this year. Cool.
But this kind of overweening pride, the kind that actually costs
the team, needs to be dealt with if this team is to advance far in
the NCAA Tournament. I’ll channel King Solomon and offer a
proverb: Be humble enough to change.
E-mail Woods at dwoods@media.ucla.edu if you also thought
that play call at the end was pure genius and Shipp’s sidearm
heave at the basket was a good look.