Last week, this column called the UCLA basketball team’s game Saturday against USC a potential turning point for the struggling Bruins.
And it was. The Bruins turned due-south, nose-diving to an almost unwatchable 21-point loss. It marked the team’s worst effort against the rival Trojans since 1945.
UCLA coach Ben Howland called it “embarrassing.”
After a game like that it seems silly to write about the Bruins’ postseason chances or about the Pac-10 conference race. Howland’s team is 7-10 this season, dead last in the Pac-10.
No, this is the kind of shocking loss that forces a consideration of the bigger picture of UCLA basketball.
How long will it take for Howland’s team to re-emerge as a real national contender?
I don’t think anyone knows ““ the answer to that question depends upon several unforeseeable factors. We don’t know how much spark recruits like Josh Smith or Tyler Lamb will provide next season. This year’s team has already suffered from one transfer, and we don’t know if there will be any more at the season’s end. There’s always the lure of professional basketball.
All we can look at is the progress the players have made so far this season and think of the formula for success coach Howland has used in past seasons.
Remember the 2007 NCAA tournament?
The Bruins didn’t have a spectacular offensive attack. Shooting guard Arron Afflalo was a legitimate college scorer, but as a team, the Bruins were no offensive juggernaut.
Their thing was defense. No one scored on them. In their run to the Final Four that year, they held four teams to less than 55 points, including Pittsburgh in the Sweet Sixteen and No. 1 seeded Kansas in the Elite Eight.
In 17 games this year the Bruins have held only two opponents to less than 55 points: Delaware State and Pepperdine.
I doubt coach Howland has somehow lost his ability to scheme defenses, but he’s certainly lost the type of defenders he had in 2007. Afflalo was a constant pest (He’s now the top defender on the Denver Nuggets), and he played alongside the burly frontline of Lorenzo Mata-Real, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute and Alfred Aboya.
Howland hasn’t brought in those types of defenders in his last two recruiting classes. He’s found some talented scorers, like Kevin Love, but he hasn’t restocked at the defensive end.
Now his team is struggling to master basic fundamentals and core defensive principles. It’s a disastrous situation for UCLA.
I couldn’t help but notice how the Trojans just torched UCLA off the dribble and out-muscled them in the paint. UCLA has no one who can stop the quick release of USC’s Dwight Lewis, and no one who can hold off Alex Stepheson, the Trojan’s massive forward.
After the USC game, I went to talk with reserve point guard Mustafa Abdul-Hamid, who played nine minutes in the game. The best way I can describe Abdul-Hamid is that he articulates as well as those rare coaches or broadcasters who can clearly explain basketball. Like them, he can point out those things that a spectator almost always misses.
Here’s what Abdul-Hamid said, when I asked what he sees as the biggest defensive problem:
“There are some defensive principles, defensive schemes that (Coach Howland) likes to use, and they’re very good, but as a young team we don’t always get it,” he said. “Chemistry is defensive as much as it is offensive. It is not an individual thing. You have to play screens a certain way. … We do have the talent, but it’s a team game.”
I think that really gets to the heart of it. Since those brilliant Final Four runs in 2006, 2007 and 2008, UCLA has added talented players, but coaches haven’t been able to recapture the defensive chemistry and mastery that those teams achieved.
And Howland is going to need a great defensive team to get back to the top.
I don’t know if that can happen next year, or the year after, and as I said before, there’s no way to foresee the rosters of those future teams.
All I’m interested in for now is how the current team improves defensively, if it does at all.
Can Howland’s troops hold anyone under that 55-point mark? Or are those days a thing of the past?
E-mail Allen at sallen@media.ucla.edu.