UCLA coach Ben Howland’s disciplinary tactics were brought into question when Sports Illustrated published an expose claiming that Howland gave preferential treatment to his more valuable players.
Perhaps Howland was trying to set a new standard on Wednesday when he benched sophomore center Joshua Smith for the first half of the team’s opening-round win over USC in the Pac-12 Tournament for being four minutes late to the team bus.
“He hasn’t been late one other time the whole year,” Howland said. “But that being said, I wasn’t going to play him in the first half being late four minutes for the team bus.”
All Pac-12 teams stay at the JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. Live for the tournament, essentially across the street from Staples Center. UCLA walked to Staples last season and lost its quarterfinal game to Oregon, so this year they took a bus.
“It’s a whole going through a tunnel and walking through people that are out drinking and hanging out in L.A. Live,” Howland said of bussing instead of walking. “So I wanted to avoid that this year, so, yes, we did, and we’ll do it tomorrow.”
Smith walked over to Staples with a team manager. Upon entering the game at the 16:03 mark of the second half, Smith committed three fouls within 45 seconds and had to be taken out again.
UCLA clearly missed him in the first half as the Bruins continued to settle for jump shots as they quickly fell behind by eight.
“It hurt us, because obviously he’s our best inside scoring threat, and we had a real size advantage with him,” Howland said. “It hasn’t been something that’s been a problem in terms of him ever being late to the bus, but I don’t care. This is too big and too important.”
It will be interesting to see if Smith is still in Howland’s doghouse Thursday when No. 5 seed UCLA takes on No. 4 seed Arizona at 2:30 p.m. The winner of Thursday’s game will play the winner of the noon game between No. 1 seed Washington and No. 9 seed Oregon State.
The Bruins were without Smith’s assistance the first time they played the Wildcats (Jan. 5) but still rolled to a 65-58 win. UCLA then fell to Arizona 65-63 in Tucson on Feb. 25.