At halftime of UCLA’s game against ASU on Thursday night,
with the Sun Devils leading 37-34, I turned to my friend and said,
“First team to 50 wins.”
About 10 minutes later, I revised my statement to, “Only
team to 50 wins.”
I love watching the Bruins play against the zone defense the way
I love traffic on the 405 and the smell of smog in the air. Yeah,
it’s bad, but there’s something inside of me that finds
a sick sort of joy in it. The badness is at least familiar, and
thus comforting.
The others in the stands groan as Darren Collison pulls the ball
out to the perimeter for the third time in a single possession, or
as Arron Afflalo hoists another 35-foot jumper as time expires on
the shot clock. I find myself applauding the consistency.
And that’s what it is. Consistency. Anyone who has ever
shouted for consistency from their teams has it with the Bruins
““ they are consistently lost against a zone defense.
It’s uncanny. I cannot for the life of me fathom how a
team can look lost against a zone, figure it out somewhere in the
middle of the second half, and then come out in the next game
looking lost again.
And it’s not just this year. Every single year I’ve
been at this school (that’d be four going on five for those
keeping track at home) it’s been the same old story. At least
now, UCLA is a team that has some shooting talent, so the lack of
effective offensive sets against a zone defense is mitigated by the
fact that the Bruins can shoot themselves out of trouble.
If I were the coach of any Pac-10 team, I would spend at least a
quarter of every practice working on a zone defense solely for the
purpose of giving UCLA fits. Look, ASU is not talented. Not even
close to talented. If talent were the sun, ASU would be Pluto (or
Neptune; sorry Pluto). But somehow it was able to hold it close
with the nation’s No. 3 team.
So, if you look at it that way, any team with actual talent that
ran an effective zone defense against UCLA … well, that would
probably be as ugly as this past game, but with the added effect of
UCLA losing. And teams with “actual talent” describes,
conservatively, at least seven teams in the Pac-10 not including
UCLA.
Look, I just don’t get it. How can a team with this
collection of offensive talent, with a point guard who can slice
and dice man-to-man defense, with a collection of 3-point marksmen,
and with at least one big man with hands look so bad against a
zone? How is that possible? This is a team that passes well, under
most normal circumstances.
My only guess is that it’s a coaching issue. The same
coaching that gives UCLA its ability to dominate defensively to the
tune of ASU scoring just two points through the first 10 minutes of
the second half prevents the team from working on the offensive
execution needed to break down a zone defense. If every emphasis is
put on defense, in practice and in simply philosophy, then
offensive sets are going to suffer.
Also, it’s hard to get really good shots against a zone
defense. Ben Howland’s offensive mindset is basically
“get a good shot.” So the team passes it around, passes
up halfway decent shots in pursuit of the perfect look. Which leads
to the aforementioned 35-foot jumper, on occasion.
The offensive ineptitude is enough that I spoke to one of my
friends after the game who said that Howland seems like the kind of
guy who either wants a layup on the offensive end, or wants to just
hand the ball off in the corner to the other team like it’s a
water polo game.
I laughed, but I think Howland would consider it on a few
possessions to avoid a fast break opportunity for the other
team.
But hey, that’s the nature of the beast, and that beast is
16-1. What are you gonna do?
E-mail Woods at dwoods@media.ucla.edu if you’d like
him to end every negative column with some version of “Hey,
UCLA is still probably the best team in the
country.”