Tuesday, March 4, 1997
OPINION:
Early-season drubbings toughen up Bruins’ defense, focus
Maturity. Work ethic. Effort. Killer instinct. Discipline. These
were all things missing from last year’s Bruin basketball team.
Sure it won the Pac-10 title and was ranked 17th overall, but this
team was far from exceptional.
This team’s players were resting on their laurels after the 1995
NCAA Championship. They had lost their hunger, their desire. Hungry
tigers had been fed and were sleeping. And why not? They had made
the cover of Sports Illustrated. "The Bruins are Back." They made
Dick Vitale eat his words. Yeah, it was a great run.
But as a wise NBA vet named Bill Bradley once said, a
championship is bittersweet: sweet because you have just won it all
and bitter because you have to get up the next morning and defend
it.
They played in last year’s NCAA tournament as if it was New
Year’s Day: hung over and partied out. Sure it was Princeton and
they were UCLA  Lew Alcindor versus Stephen Hawkins  so
who didn’t like our chances?
But the Bruins played like a bunch of sixth-graders, crying
about every call, losing their composure. The game showed the whole
country how mentally weak the Bruins were. And remember, the game
is 10 percent physical and 90 percent mental and the rest is luck,
according to Yogi Berra. Yogi, never the mathematician, had a
point.
All right, but let’s be fair. They had just won a national
championship, so it was all good. Right?
Wrong. The current squad came in to this season with the same
holes it had last year. Nobody could create effectively and with
consistency off the dribble. Cameron Dollar was as smooth as sand
paper. Toby Bailey was like the tap water in the Bronx: sometimes
hot, sometimes cold. Can Jelani McCoy hit a 15-footer? Can Jelani
draw rim on a 15-footer?
And they were still so soft you could roast them over a
campfire.
But before you tell the Klan to red card my ass because these
guys just won the Pac-10 championship, let me explain.
I give these guys a lot of credit for overcoming what could have
turned into a disastrous season. Losing Harrick could not have been
any worse for the team. Or could it?
Watch this team play. Look at the way it plays in the first half
vs. the way it plays in the second. Watch the players’ expressions
change after halftime. These guys have talent, but they’ve been
told that so many times that they’ve actually started to believe
it. They don’t have anything to prove. Even Dick Vitale says four
of them are going to get drafted in the first round.
Enter Steve Lavin.
This guy jumps around so much you’d think his shoes were on
fire. (Clear this up for me: Who sweats more during the game,
Jelani or Lavin?) Lavin kicks these guys in the ass when he needs
to and calms them down when he needs to. Example: the Duke
game.
After Blue Devil guard Trajan Langdon hit three consecutive
three pointers in the Duke game, Lavin pulled Bailey to the
sideline for a couple seconds before the team huddled. I don’t know
what he said, but Langdon scored two points the rest of the game.
Say what you will about Harrick, but Lavin’s personality is better
suited for this team.
You say that the Kansas loss was a low point in the season and
the Stanford drubbing was even lower. I say those two games were
the best two things that could have happened to our team.
Think about how they’ve reacted. This team was too lazy and not
focused enough to play defense against Kansas. How does a
half-court team like Kansas score nearly 100 points? No
defense.
How do you lose by 48 points? No defense.
But check out the D in the Duke game. It was aggressive and
suffocating. Bailey shut out Duke’s leading scorer in the first
half. The Bruins needed to be humiliated by Kansas and Stanford, so
that they’d start buying into Lavin’s aggressive defensive theory.
As Lavin said earlier this season, "Defense is what I’m about."
Defense beat Duke. Defense beat Arizona. Defense beat Stanford.
Consider that in those games Langdon, Mike Bibby and Brevin Knight
shot a combined 10-for-49 from the field.
You can’t play good defense if you’re not focused. You can’t
play good defense if you’re not willing to work. You can’t play
defense if you don’t have character and mental toughness.
And maybe Dollar’s not smooth and Bailey’s not consistent and
Jelani can’t hit from the outside. But now that they’re tougher,
none of that matters. That mental toughness doesn’t just appear
overnight  it took a season filled with disappointment,
humiliation and frustration.
They’re not winning now in spite of their troubles. These guys
are winning because of them.
Toussi is a Daily Bruin columnist.