It is no secret that a crucial factor behind the success the Ben Howland-coached UCLA teams have had is an aggressive, relentless man defense.
From suffocating double-teams in the corner to having shut-down defenders in the likes of Arron Afflalo, Russell Westbrook and Darren Collison, the Bruin teams of past years earned reputations as lock-down defensives team.
This season, the success of the team is still tied to the performance of the Bruins’ defense, yet in an enormously different sense.
For much of the season thus far, the UCLA men’s basketball team has not played the type of defense many have come to expect from a Howland-led squad and has struggled greatly as a result. The latest example came Saturday against Arizona when the Bruins could not stay in front of their men and were routed 77-63 in front of 8,681 people at Pauley Pavilion.
Exemplifying the struggle it was defensively for the Bruins was the performance of Arizona guard Kyle Fogg. Fogg, averaging just 7.8 points per game heading into the game, scored a career-high 25 points on 9-of-12 shooting.
The sophomore from Brea was a handful for the Bruins, consistently showing the ability to drive past the defenders for easy baskets.
“To have Kyle Fogg have his best game of his career really hurt us,” Howland said. “He was driving us all day and we never did a good job staying in front of him at all.”
Arizona coach Sean Miller was elated to get that type of production from Fogg, whose previous career-best was 18 points.
“It’s great to see him improving,” Miller said.
On Thursday against Arizona State, the Bruins played a few possessions of zone defense, a rarity for Howland, and the results were positive.
On Saturday against Arizona, the Bruins played their usual man defense for the majority of the game and consistently were beat off the dribble by the athletic Arizona players.
Howland said one reason he did not play much zone against Arizona was because of the Wildcats’ ability to get offensive rebounds. Yet even against a man defense, Arizona was still able to tally 12 offensive rebounds, 10 coming in the first half.
“The worry is that they’re going to even hurt you worse on offensive rebounds, and that’s why we stayed in man,” Howland said.
According to senior guard Michael Roll, a switch to zone defense would not have helped too much.
“You could say if we went to zone it would help, but they were shooting well too,” Roll said. “I don’t think that would have helped.”
Rebounding an issue: There were a number of times in Saturday’s game where the Bruins made the initial stop, forcing a missed shot by Arizona. Yet the Bruins were unable to ultimately come away with the ball, allowing offensive rebounds by Arizona to prolong possessions.
For the game, Arizona out-rebounded UCLA 38-31 and had 12 second-chance points to the Bruins’ four.
Unlike in previous seasons, the Bruins do not have one player who can consistently get double-figure rebounds each night. Whereas in years past the Bruins could rely on players such as Kevin Love, Lorenzo Mata-Real and Alfred Aboya to get rebounds, Howland does not have that luxury this season.
“We’re not a great rebounding team,” Howland said. “Everybody on our team has to be involved for every rebound situation for us to win.”
Jerime Anderson tweaks groin: Howland said that sophomore point guard Jerime Anderson tweaked his groin in Thursday’s win over Arizona State.
Anderson missed a number of practices prior to the start of the season with a tweaked groin.
Howland said that, while Anderson did not do much in the team’s walk-through on Friday night, he did not know how much the groin affected Anderson on Saturday and he did not play him any differently.
Anderson played 25 minutes on Saturday, scoring four points and notching four assists.