UCLA basketball coach Ben Howland invited a few of his players to stop by Pauley Pavilion on Monday to work on their shooting. Nothing serious. Upon returning from yet another overtime-laden road trip, Howland had decided against running a full practice. Instead, he wanted his starters to rest, given how much time they had already spent on the hardwood in the last few days.
That wasn’t exactly the plan Michael Roll had in mind.
“I walked in the gym, and he was already out there ready to get going,” Howland said of his senior captain. “So I didn’t stop him.”
That’s just the kind of athlete Roll sees himself as, and with this year’s Pac-10 title race wide open, it’s just who UCLA will need him to be if they want a chance at that crown.
As a team, the Bruins logged 85 minutes of game time last weekend in an extra-period loss at Oregon and then a double-digit win at Oregon State. Roll was on the court for all but two of those minutes.
That’s become almost the standard this season for UCLA’s only senior guard. Without a legitimate replacement on the bench to let Roll catch his breath during games, Howland has kept him busier than ever.
However, the Bruins’ leading scorer seems wholly unfazed by ““ even excited for ““ the extra work.
“I feel like I’ve been ready and been doing a good job,” Roll said. “So I’m trying to keep it up.”
But surely, after playing nearly the entirely game, he loses a step.
“Definitely not,” he said. “That’s why you put in the extra time during the off-season with a lot of extra running.”
Those summer workouts appear to be paying dividends for Roll, who leads the Pac-10 in minutes played and is just six games away from breaking the school record for most games played in a career. Barring any unfortunate setbacks for the fifth-year senior, Roll can break it in his final regular season home game, the team’s rematch against Oregon.
Far more important to Roll, however, is making sure those games go into the record books as wins. As one of the Bruins’ leaders and most consistent scorers, Roll’s ability to stay fresh late in the game will be key in the second half of the conference season. That kind of resolve was never more apparent than against California early last month when he sank the game-winning jumper in his 41st minute of playing time.
With Howland recently using just eight players in a shortened rotation, Roll isn’t the only one paying his dues in full.
Roll’s backcourt colleague, sophomore guard Malcolm Lee, is a close third in the league in minutes played this Pac-10 season, averaging 36.1 per game. Lee’s body, though, has a history of being unable to keep up with his ambition. Dating back to his days at John W. North High School in Riverside, Lee said he would periodically get severe full-body cramps that forced him to leave the court.
After this happened several times earlier this season, Lee and the UCLA training staff made it a priority to avoid these physical breakdowns. Lee said he now makes sure to drink plenty of electrolytes and stay on top of his diet, especially before games.
“Before I was logging like 32 minutes and then cramping up,” Lee said. “But now I’m logging around 36 minutes, and I haven’t been cramping, so I attribute that to our trainer.”
Against the Ducks, freshman forward Tyler Honeycutt gave his team 40 minutes, the highest total of his young career. The Bruins’ starting forward admitted to some cramping of his own, which he said surprised him because he had never experienced it in that intensity before.
“The next day we were all sore, from me, to Nik (Dragovic), to Mike, to Malcolm, to Reeves (Nelson),” Honeycutt said. “We were all super sore. The next day we just stretched, we didn’t even practice.”
Luckily for UCLA, sophomore point guard Jerime Anderson got into the action in Saturday’s game against Oregon State, making his return from the hip-flexor injury that cost him three games. Roll was all for Anderson’s reappearance in the lineup.
“It gives some guys some minutes off,” Roll said. “Malcolm and I, we’re playing a lot of minutes, so hopefully we get the rotation going. (Anderson) played well last game (vs. OSU), he had a huge steal in a big part of the game and that kind of sealed the win for us.”
Anderson has been dealing with injury in the same location on and off all season, but Howland said he completed a workout on Monday without pain.
“I don’t know if he’s at 100 percent or not,” Howland said of Anderson. “We were pretty conservative about trying to bring him back so (the injury) wouldn’t reoccur.”
Though preseason projections had Anderson running the point for the Bruins, Lee has taken over that position in his classmate’s absence. The only other player capable of playing there, according to Howland, is redshirt junior guard Mustafa Abdul-Hamid. His minutes, however, have been used primarily to rest one of the team’s big men, who are running short on breaks, too.
“It’s going to help a lot to add an extra guard,” Lee said of Anderson’s return. “We were already short on guards when Jerime was healthy, so it’s just another ball-handler out there.”
While the roster remains skimpy, the Bruins’ opportunities for another postseason run have become equally sparse. For Roll, every game is another one closer to the end of his UCLA career, so he’s made it clear that he will relish what he has left, minute by minute.
“This is what I want,” he said. “This is what I love, and I’ve been preparing for it for a long time.”