As the No. 5 UCLA men’s basketball team prepares for this weekend’s road games against Washington State and Washington, it will once again be without one of its major contributors.
Junior forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute sprained his left ankle during the Bruins’ Saturday win over Arizona and isn’t expected to play in either game.
Fortunately for the Bruins, they have plenty of experience at overcoming injuries.
UCLA’s roster has seen more than its fair share of players forced to the sidelines for a slew of reasons: Darren Collison’s sprained knee, Michael Roll’s ruptured plantar fascia, and Mbah a Moute’s and Lorenzo Mata-Real’s concussions, just to name a few.
So as the Bruins look ahead to their game against No. 17 Washington State, being down a man seems like more of the same.
“It seems like, especially in Pac-10, that we can’t be completely healthy for more than a week,” center Kevin Love said. “When that happens, I think we’ll be a much better team. That’s scary for us. I just wish, for a couple weeks, for the rest of the season, that we can be healthy so this team can continue to grow.”
Coach Ben Howland, for his part, rejected the idea that heading into a road game against a team predicted by many in the media to be UCLA’s main rival for the Pac-10 title is an especially inopportune time to lose Mbah a Moute
“It’s not just the first game against (Washington State), it’s this period in general,” Howland said. “Luc’s one of our best players. He’s obviously one of our best defensive players. He always guards the other team’s best players. … He’s definitely a very important component to the success we’ve had over the last three years. Just like last time, any time he’s out, it’s a big hit.”
Mbah a Moute has a tremendous amount of versatility defensively, and his absence will likely be most keenly felt by the Bruins on that end of the court.
“He’s probably our best defender because he can (guard) multiple positions, from point guard all the way down to the five man,” junior forward Alfred Aboya said. “So that’s something we’ll have to make up for.”
NOT SO LONG A ROAD: In the past, the trip to Pullman, Wash., hasn’t been one for the Bruins to look forward to. Regardless of how good the Cougars have been over the years, traveling to Washington State’s remote campus has never been easy and has typically involved multiple stopovers along the way that make the trip take, according to Howland, upward of 10 hours.
So this year, the Bruins will be taking a chartered plane.
“Washington isn’t the greatest trip for us,” junior guard/forward Josh Shipp said. “It’s definitely good to charter our own flight. … It’s a little plane, but it’s better than flying commercial.”
Love, a freshman who has never made the trip with the Bruins, laughed when asked about the new flight plans.
“I actually demanded my own plane,” he said. “But I thought I’d let the team on too.”