There are no more excuses.
No longer can the UCLA basketball team write off poor,
low-energy performances as preseason experiments designed to give
everyone playing time, rather than win.
And no longer can out-of-sync offensive and defensive efforts be
attributed to the fact that the games don’t count in the
standings.
Starting with tonight’s season opener against San Diego at
Pauley Pavilion, every game counts.
“I can pretty much guarantee we’re going to
win,” said guard Jon Crispin. “We’re not going to
wait until Kansas to start playing. We’re going to start now
because we are embarrassed.”
The No. 15 Bruins need a victory badly, particularly with the
game against No. 6 Duke looming on Saturday. A loss against the
Blue Devils could put the Bruins at 0-2 to begin the season.
“For a week now they’ve been hearing a lot of
negative press, so I’m sure they will come out
prepared,” said San Diego head coach Brad Holland, who played
for UCLA from 1976-1979 and was an assistant coach here from
1988-1992.
San Diego (1-0), who went 16-13 last year and won their season
opener against Nevada 77-75, isn’t exactly a national
powerhouse.
However, the Toreros could give UCLA problems, especially if the
Bruins continue to play as inconsistently as they did in their two
exhibition losses.
“They are a competitive team,” UCLA head coach Steve
Lavin said of San Diego’s team. “They are well coached,
and they bring size inside.”
The Toreros’ center is senior Jason Keep, who, standing at
6-foot-10, has the potential to dominate the post against the
Bruins’ inexperienced big men.
Keep scored 19 points against Nevada, and recorded five
rebounds.
“Jason, because of his size and his athletic ability,
affords us an opportunity to put pressure on the interior
defense,” Holland said.
Still, if UCLA comes out with any intensity and concentration,
they shouldn’t have trouble chalking up a win against the
Toreros. Unfortunately, one of their epicenters for intensity,
point guard Ryan Walcott, is not eligible to play in
tonight’s game because of an NCAA penalty.
Walcott redshirted his freshman year after playing in one of the
preseason exhibition games ““ an NCAA infraction. To restore
his eligibility, the NCAA issued a two game suspension to start the
2002-2003 season.
So without Walcott, sophomore Cedric Bozeman will have sole
responsibility at the point against San Diego and of helping bring
some much-needed intensity to the Bruin squad.
“The biggest thing is that we have to be motivated,”
junior forward T.J. Cummings said. “We can’t be
thinking about the whole game or future games, but rather
individual possessions. And we must execute.”
But can UCLA bring focus to tonight’s game, and not be
looking forward to Saturday’s nationally televised game
against Duke?
Depends on whom you ask.
“Duke is so far away,” said freshman center Ryan
Hollins. “We take things one game at a time. We’re only
thinking of San Diego now.”
But Crispin knows that with such an important game lingering in
the future, tonight’s game is clearly only the second most
important of the week.
“If you beat Duke, you go into the top 5 or 10 in the
rankings,” he said. “If you beat San Diego, you
don’t even get a pat on the butt.”