It’s a start. A good first step.
Seeing the general apathy UCLA students have expressed toward
sports over the years, I was expecting a very poor turnout at
Wednesday night’s Basketball Tipoff Party.
I was wrong.
Estimates of student attendance at Pauley Pavilion ranged from
800 to 1,000 at the event.
Not great, but not bad, either.
It’s a far cry from the numbers other schools across the
country get at their Midnight Madness or tip-off party events. A
far cry.
Kentucky broke the NCAA record with 23,000 fans for a
tip-off-type event. More reasonably, Illinois got 15,000 fans,
Michigan State 12,000, Indiana 10,000 and Connecticut 7,000.
UCLA has a better winning tradition than all of those elite
programs, and Bruin fans should easily be packing Pauley Pavilion
for this kind of event.
Yet they don’t.
But Wednesday night was a start.
Ever since 1995 (the season after the Bruins won the national
championship), UCLA hasn’t had any type of year-beginning
event like Wednesday night.
So hopefully, the Basketball Tipoff Party ends up being a
stepping stone for the future.
And there definitely was interest in student support ““ an
interest that was mutual.
At the end of the night, when men’s coach Ben Howland and
women’s coach Kathy Olivier spoke to the crowd, both
emphasized the importance of having a strong student section.
Howland acknowledged that the crowd frequently fires up his team
and pointed to three games where the Bruins came back last season
““ against Pepperdine, Washington State and Washington ““
where he said the crowd was the reason they won.
I doubt Howland, Olivier and their teams would have taken time
out of their busy schedules if they didn’t genuinely think
that a strong, loud home crowd helped their teams to win.
And the Basketball Tipoff Party was a good step in creating that
intimidating atmosphere.
There are some kinks that need to be worked out for the future,
however.
Howland started the men’s scrimmage at the same exact
moment that the students were let into Pauley Pavilion ““ a
very bad move because it took a few minutes for the fans to get
situated and start making noise. But seven minutes in after the
first “take off that red shirt” chant, everything was
back to normal.
Another mistake was not having the women scrimmage first. A lot
of the students left as the women were scrimmaging and before
Howland and Olivier got to speak.
Also, it would have been nice to see the men and women compete
as individuals in the 3-point contest rather than be paired with a
player from the other team. When simply shooting 3-pointers, men
have no physical advantage over women. None at all. Lisa Willis
would have beaten two of the three male participants had they been
competing as individuals.
The slam-dunk contest was a great idea ““ pure
brilliance.
Freshman Darren Collison put on a show, and will be an instant
fan favorite as soon he takes the court in an actual game. If he
ever gets the opportunity to dunk on a fast break, watch out.
Freshman Ryan Wright was fun to watch as well.
Granted, it was only a scrimmage, but these freshmen were
exciting, and as Jordan Farmar said, “They’re going to
be very good.”
Basketball is back, and I couldn’t be happier.
E-mail Quiñonez at
gquinonez@media.ucla.edu.