Several e-mailers have brought to my attention the fact that I
am out of touch with the average UCLA student. I have been called a
geek, overwhelmingly critical, unnecessarily negative, clueless as
to what most students care about and many, many different
expletives that I can’t print in the paper. Consequently,
I’ve decided to get back in touch with the average student by
observing real student-athletes in competition.
No, I’m not talking about those who compete in varsity
sports for UCLA. In reality they are more athletes then students
because many were recruited to the school primarily for their
athletic talents. Also during each athlete’s respective
season, sports comes first for them, not school. UCLA varsity
players should be considered athlete-students, not
student-athletes.
The student-athletes I observed were on display at the Wooden
Center. These are students who merely play sports for the fun of
it, the unorganized form of sports.
Jason Kapono, Earl Watson and Billy Knight have all played in
pick-up games at the Wooden Center, so I had to see the
high-quality pick-up games at the Wooden Center.
When I walked in, there were full-court games being played on
two of the three courts, but the two games were completely
different from each other. On the middle court, the players
hustled, passed the ball around, were nice, courteous and
didn’t commit any hard fouls. The inferior players, of
course, played on that court. They were all shorter than the
players on the near court and didn’t have an outside
shot.
On the near court was where the UCLA-type basketball was being
played. All of the players had talent but didn’t play as a
team. Sound familiar? In the game there was once a streak of seven
consecutive drives up and down the court without a pass. There was
a span of 18 drives in which there was a total of seven passes.
That’s 0.39 passes a drive. What ever happened to the days
when coaches preached three passes per drive? Apparently, now
it’s 0.3, not three. During the entire time I was there, they
averaged 0.64 passes per drive. Compare that to 1.33 passes per
drive on the middle court.
The shot selection by the hotshots on the near court was
terrible. Even though every basket was worth one point, I saw
almost as many shots attempted outside of the three point line than
inside of it (44 percent). But that’s pick-up basketball, a
completely different version of basketball than the public is used
to seeing (or is it?).
I talked to one of the star players after the game.
“Yeah, I’d like to compare my game to Juwan
Howard’s,” the player, who refused to tell me his name,
said.
Howard was a member of Michigan’s “Fab Five”
basketball team, which dominated college basketball through 1993.
Since then, Howard has been an NBA bust. He has put up decent NBA
statistics, but has failed to live up to expectations. It’s
always good to see people compare themselves to that kind of
player.
After watching pick-up basketball players not hustle or play
defense, I turned to one of the most exciting sports played at the
Wooden Center: ping-pong.
The two players were playing a fierce match and displayed all
kinds of methods to hit a ball. I saw balls fly like
split-fastballs, sinkers, curveballs ““ almost like
baseball’s best pitchers were on display.
Some of ping-pong’s critics say that ping-pong is not a
sport. The sweaty players differed.
“Ping-pong causes you to sweat; it’s very
intense,” one player said. “It’s certainly more
of a sport than Olympic sports like ballroom dancing and
gymnastics.”
After ping-pong, I walked over to watch the most dangerous sport
at the Wooden Center: racquetball.
Racquetball is played in a cage of sorts, with three wooden
walls and a high ceiling, enclosed by a see-through wall facing the
hallway in Wooden. The ball is a speeding bullet and can fly at
speeds over 100 mph.
“Racquetball isn’t that dangerous,” Farshid
Moshnefi said, as a ball barely missed the head of a player on a
nearby cage. “You just have to pay attention.”
Moshnefi continued to talk to me about racquetball, the
intricacies of the game, how the ball is served, how points are
scored and, more importantly, what kind of players are
successful.
“Racquetball isn’t all about strength,” he
said. “You have hit the ball right and angle it
right.”
I tested Moshnefi’s theory, and watched a match between
two players where one clearly hit the ball harder than the other.
The strong guy won six points in a row.
Ironically, the strong guy was wearing a jersey of ex-UCLA and
current Los Angeles Dodger Eric Karros. Yes, the same Eric Karros
who displayed virtually no power this season, hitting zero home
runs from July 2 to Aug. 27.
Ңbull;Ӣbull;Ӣbull;
The Stat Geek’s Stat of the Week: Only 546 of the 1,221
words in Jeff Agase’s column Wednesday actually made it into
the paper, or 44.7 percent. Read his entire Pac-10 football column
on our Web site,
dailybruin.ucla.edu.