This was a game the Bruins needed.
Facing a well-known and respected Temple team, the Bruins got
the victory although they did not put on their best performance.
They got contributions from unlikely sources in Cedric Bozeman, and
Luc Richard Mbah a Moute.
Most importantly, the Bruins are going to New York for the NIT
semifinals, and still have a chance to face No. 1 Duke in the
finals.
They will be playing on national television, and they will keep
all Bruin fans hungry for something to do aside from eating
turkey.
If you think I’m overplaying the victory, consider the
last time UCLA was on national television in a meaningful preseason
game.
It was 2001. The Bruins faced unranked Ball State in the Maui
Invitiational and were embarrassed. In 1996, one year after winning
the national championship, UCLA lost at home in the pre-season NIT
to Tulsa.
This year, on the other hand, the Bruins will be facing an
up-and-coming team in No. 12 Memphis on Wednesday, and will have a
week of publicity preceding their trip to hallowed Madison Square
Garden.
Their underclassmen will have a chance to show their real
potential before facing a tough Pac-10 schedule.
The Bruins, as a whole, will have the chance to live up to their
preseason No. 19 ranking, and will now have motivation when they
face non-conference patsy Delaware State on Saturday.
If you don’t think the players are enthused, think
again.
“We’re very, very excited,” sophomore Arron
Afflalo said. “We deserve it, we’re hungry, we wanted
to get there.”
Freshman forward Mbah a Moute added to Afflalo’s reaction,
by chiming in, “hell yeah.”
For a team as young as UCLA, this was a step it needed to take.
Whether the Bruins get creamed by Memphis on Wednesday, or beat
Duke on Friday, they will show fans something about themselves that
couldn’t be learned from home games against Coppin State,
Wagner and Sacramento State later in December.
They will have a chance for East Coast media like Dick Vitale
and Digger Phelps to actually see them live instead of watching the
Bruins on late-night replays like they would normally be forced to
do.
And most importantly, they will keep up the optimism that has
been riding high around the Bruins’ program the last few
weeks with the success of UCLA football.
“I’m very excited about New York,” UCLA coach
Ben Howland said.
And the trip will be a pure experience for freshmen like Mbah a
Moute.
“All I know about New York is big buildings, and a nice
city,” said the freshman, whose former high school teammate
plays basketball at Stony Brook in New York City.
Mbah a Moute represents exactly the kind of team the Bruins are
right now. They definitely have flashes of brilliance, as displayed
by the 15-point run they went on in the first half on Thursday, but
they have also showed signs of disorganization, and pure
frustration.
At one point in Thursday’s game, freshman guard Mike Roll
had three turnovers in three consecutive possessions. To top it
off, the Bruins threw up three straight fade-away 3-pointers with
the clock running down just minutes later.
But those kind of struggles are exactly why the Bruins need to
go to New York. They need to face teams such as Temple, and find
out that Mbah a Moute can grab 10 rebounds, and be a force on the
offensive backboard. They need to know that center Ryan Hollins can
hit clutch free throws down the stretch and grab critical
rebounds.
Bruin fans may still not know much about this team, but the trip
to the Big Apple will show them a lot.
Email Parikh at sparikh@media.ucla.edu.