Bumped. Bruins in Texas or any Long Horns who might have information for BaldBruin, please help him out! We need him at the game. GO BRUINS. -N

Crazy title, but this post is not OT.

This past weekend, I attended a holiday party with some UCLA friends with whom my wife and I routinely travel to away UCLA football games.  We usually pick one or two away games each year to attend which unfortunately has fallen off in recent years, as our kids have grown older and gotten more involved in fall sports, like soccer and flag football.

We've been to South Bend, Tennessee, several bowl games and to nearly all the pac-10 stadiums.  We constantly try to do our small part to improve the impression many  have that UCLA's fans "don't travel well". 

It was on the bus ride from Chicago to South Bend in 2006 when our crew began planning our trip to Austin in 2010 to catch the UT vs. UCLA football game.  Back then, we didn't care what day the game fell on or whether either team would be rebuilding or on the upswing.  This was a game that couldn't be missed.  6th Street, UT Austin, Beer Gardens, great bars, a Saturday in the great state of Texas watching your favorite college football team do battle with the Longhorns, one of the country's premier athletic and academic institutions.

Out came our Blackberry's and IPhones to begin checking dates, flights and hotel availability as party-goers around us continued to drink in the holiday cheer.

"Holy crap," I exclaimed to one of my friends, "do you know what day the game falls on?"

"Yeah, Saturday September 18th.  Why?" he replied.

"Well, guess what.  Unless we can figure out a way to move the game or change the date of Yom Kippur, looks like we'll be watching the game at the family break-the-fast over brisket, bagels and Manischewiz wine."

"You're kidding" he dejectedly replied.

"Outlook doesn't lie" I responded turning my Blackberry, revealing the calendar entry from 9/18/2010.

Well, not sure what we're going to do just yet.  Religion is fairly important to us, especially  raising young children with an understanding of how important their heritage is.  And this being the holiest day of the year, it appears unlikely right now that we'll be making the pilgrimage to Austin in 2010.

"You better post on this" my wife immediately said once she heard of the news, right after her knee-jerk reaction of "screw Yom Kippur", which she quickly retracted after realizing the gravity of the situation. 

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We belong to a large, reformed Temple on the Westside of Los Angeles. Every High Holiday season, our temple rents a ball room at the Century Park Hotel because our sanctuary is too small to accommodate the large number of Jews who attend services this time of year. This year the Hotel double booked so our temple had to look elsewhere for a place to hold services.

Well, I'm predicting this year should be very "sweet". Our family and community will ring in the new year at Royce Hall on the campus of UCLA.

I'm leaving shortly but I wanted to share with my sports community on BN that not only will I be praying for health, happiness, peace in the middle east, and a variety of other more spiritual things, this year I'll say a little extra prayer for our Bruin gridiron warriors who play tonight on the eve of the first night of Rosh Hashanna. I'll ask G-d to let our boys play again on the Secular New Years Day in a major bowl game and for a victory tonight.   I'll be at my other temple tonight (aka the Rose Bowl) to help cheer on our squad. But starting the New Year off praying at Royce has to mean that the Gods (whoever your G-d is) are looking down on us.

 

Happy New year to all.

This is admittedly a bit of a stretch, and no analytics or logic went into this comparison, but I started thinking about some similarities between our losses to Norte Dame in 2006 and 2007 and our series with the Volunteers, and how hopefully a similar fate to the one we Bruin fans experienced in the ND series, awaits the Volunteers faithful.

When we played ND in South Bend in 2006, we arguably lost a game we should have won.  We were leading late, played not to lose (thanks KD) and lost on an amazing last minute drive by ND.  Last year, the Vols arguably lost a game they should have won.  They led most of the game, we came back to take the lead in the 4th quarter, only to allow a last second field goal to tie the game.  We eventually win in overtime, sending the Vols home, to await the rematch this year.

In 2007, we played a horrible ND team at home.  They hadn’t won a game all year.  It was a game we should have won, but ND came into our house and kicked our asses despite a very large (78,543 reported in attendance), very pro-UCLA crowd at the Rose Bowl.  While we’re not as bad this year as ND was in 2007, and Neyland will be much more hostile than the Rose Bowl was when ND thumped us, but hopefully next Saturday, the Bruins will achieve the same result as the Irish did against us in 2007.  Hopefully, the bright orange-clad Volunteer faithful will feel the same pain we did after an embarrassing home loss to ND at home. 

Hopefully, they will lose the second game in a high profile out of conference home/away series. 

Hopefully, they will lose a home game most think they should win. 

Hopefully, they will believe like many of us did before the ND game in 2007 that the prior year’s game was one we should have won and try too hard to avenge a bitter road loss.

A fan can Hope, can’t  he???

Bumped. GO BRUINS. - N

Yesterday was the final day of the first week of the UCLA Summer Basketball Camp where young kids from around the Los Angeles area ages 7-12 can visit College basketball Mecca and enjoy a week long session of learning and playing hoops.  Two of my boys attended the camp and yesterday was the awards ceremony and final tournament.

As has been the case for the last few years, Coach Howland gave a nice motivational speech just prior to handing out the camp awards.   It was nice that CBH was there and he imparted some nice words to the campers, but the buzz was about another Bruin Basketball star that was in attendance that day.

Prior to the awards ceremony my boys were absolutely giddy as they told me that "Bobo", UCLA Center J'mison Morgan, was hanging around the gyms (the kids play at Pauley, Wooden Center and the old Mens Gym) signing autographs for the kids. 

"Was he still here?" I inquired of my star struck young hoopsters.  "Yeah, dad. He's right over there sitting in the corner signing stuff". 

So, over the objections of my kids, who were afraid their old man was going to embarrass them, I casually sauntered over to the small throng of young boys thrusting head bands, sneakers, shirts and basketballs into the immense hands of the continuously smiling, very tall young man.  It was, in fact, J'mison Morgan.  I positioned myself at the end of the makeshift line and waited for my turn to speak with this budding young star. To read how it all turned out come with me after the jump.

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I saw this in the local fish wrap a few days ago and thought Nester or one of the other front pagers would have picked it up.  Maybe because it isn't directly a UCLA story, but it appears CRN's oldest boy has been named QB1 at Loyola HS as a junior.

Question for the Nation:

If the young "gun slinging" Neuheisel turns out to be a top notch D1 QB prospect, does CRN and Coach Chow actively recruit him or would such a recuit produce cries of nepotism resulting in unwanted pressure on CRN, the program and Jerry causing the staff to "pass" (bad pun intended).  Do you take a top recruit even if he is the coach's son or avoid the scrutiny and potentially have to scheme against him in the future?

 

Thoughts?

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Since the beginning of this season, many here on BN have contended that this is a young, inexperienced team, with lots of freshman who are new to the system. This has been done in part, I believe, to temper expectations for this team.  While I applaud the rationale for trying to make such a claim, (keep expectations modest so as to not disappoint) I have secretly taken issue with the assessment believing in my gut that any team that starts three seniors all of which play considerable minutes, can not truly be considered “young”.  Then, consider that the three reserves used most this year are juniors, one of which (MR) is a redshirt Junior who has been in CBH’s system four years, it becomes nearly impossible to subscribe to the belief that this team will underachieve because of too many Freshman.

So in the spirit of BN, where numbers and analysis are what carry the day, I went back and looked at each of the teams from the 03’/04’ seasons through the present to see if I could come up with some evidence to support my theory that this team is as seasoned as some, if not most of CBH’s previous squads.

Disclaimer:  I’m a lawyer and while I fancy myself a decent “numbers guy” I’m no CPA or statistician.  I’m going to show you all my calculations and assumptions to make sure there is complete transparency related to my argument, as I know I’m taking a position contrary to the belief of many who post here.

For each year I looked at the players from the roster who played the majority of minutes in that year and what year they were in school.  Freshman got a 1; Sophomores a 2; Juniors a 3; Seniors a 4 and any player who redshirted while playing for CBH got another year added for the years they were actually in the system (for example, Josh Shipp got a 5 for this year because he redshirted while playing for CBH).  My analysis is admittedly somewhat flawed in that I did not have the actual minutes each player played, but having followed the Bruins pretty closely during these years, I have decent recall of which players played the most minutes in a given year.  If I made any glaring mistakes, I’m sure you’ll let me know.

So here goes:

03’-04

Ariza -1

Bozeman – 3

TJ Cummings 4

Fey – 2

Hollins – 2

Josiah Johnson – 3

Dijon Thompson – 3

18/7 = 2.57

 

04’-05’

Brian Morrison  - 4

Farmar – 1

Afflalo – 1

Bozeman – 4

Shipp – 1

Fey – 3

Hollins – 3

Josiah Johnson 4

Dijon Thompson – 4

 

25/9 = 2.77

 

05’-06’

Farmar – 2

AA – 2

Bozeman – 4

Shipp – (RS DNP)

Fey – 4

Hollins – 4

LRMBM – 1

Mata – 2

Collison – 1

AA2 – 1

 

21 / 9= 2.33

 

06’-07’

Westbrook – 1

AA – 3

Keefe – 1

Shipp – 3 (Includes RS)

Roll -2

LRMBM – 2

Mata – 3

Collison -2

AA2 -2

19 / 9 = 2.11

07’-08 ‘

Westbrook – 2

Keefe -2

Shipp – 4

Roll – RS _DNP

Love – 1

Drago – 2 (I didn’t include him last year as he didn’t play much as a freshman)

LRMBM – 3

Mata – 4

Collison – 3

AA2 – 3

 24 / 9 = 2.66

 

08’-09’

JK – 3

Shipp – 5 (Includes RS)

Roll – 4

Drago – 3

Collison – 4

AA2 – 4

JA – 1

DG – 1

JH – 1

ML – 1

 27 / 10 = 2.77

So here is what it looks like: 

03-04 – 2.57

04-05 – 2.77

05-06 – 2.33

06-07 – 2.11

07-08 – 2.66

08-09 – 2.77

While not a perfect analysis, I am fairly convinced that compared to the teams in the past, this is not a young, inexperience team.  Our final 4 team from 06’-07’ was clearly our youngest and this year’s is in fact one of the most mature. 

So, maybe going forward we can ease off the youth/lack of experience argument here to mitigate expectations or try and make people feel better after a difficult loss.  I don’t buy it anymore.  I really never did, and this analysis has helped confirm this belief.  

Others have trotted out more plausible rationales for these losses such as a lack of heart, or a lack of real commitment to defense or no true “go-to-guy” (which I also don’t subscribe to because I believe DC is that guy – at least as much as any of our previous leaders (Farmar, AA, Westbrook or Love)).  Some have chosen to hang it on the refs (not one I’m fond of either). However, I for one, refuse to buy into the assertion that youth and inexperience is an excuse for underperforming this year.  I just don’t see the numbers supporting such a contention.

This has been a tough week for the Bruin faithful.  I have been in a terrible funk since Thursday night.  Which is why I probably went though this exercise on a Valentines Saturday night (my 4 Valentines were asleep at the time).  Not sure I feel any better (or worse for that matter), now that I’m done, but what I do know is that I expect more from this team.   I expect it because we have one of the best coaches in the country and a team that is one of the most experienced CBH has had while at UCLA.   

Don’t misunderstand, please. I’m not one of those people who can only be satisfied hanging banners or winning championships.  I expected 4 or 5 losses this year.  I knew there would be ups and downs.  But I also expected to pull out games like the one this past Thursday.  And I expected to win at least half of the games we played against ranked opponents, which I don’t think is possible anymore. What I didn’t expect was the kind of effort I saw yesterday.   And I certainly don’t think our poor effort had anything to do with youth or inexperience.

This is a good team.  Not great yet but I hope we’ll get there.  I do think this team has as much potential to win the Pac-10 and get to another Final Four as any we have seen in recent years.  Whether they live up to that potential remains to be seen.  But youth and inexperience is not an excuse I’m willing to accept if we don’t.  I hope we do live up to my lofty expectations.  I know all our Ben Ball warriors want to win a National Championship as do most people here on BN.   And so do I.  But if we don’t, I for one will have enjoyed the ride. 

Let's try and continue to enjoy the ride.  It’s far from over.

No excuses.  High expectations.  No regrets.

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While atching last nights game at Pauley, a question came to mind.  The question arose as a result of our usual inconsistent Pac-10 officiating and the answer just may be that. . . Pac -10 refs are just sub par and inconsistent.

But over the course of the game as our bigs were hedging on screens, there were fouls called a few times (AA2 and JK) where our guys seemed to be in perfect position, but got called for a foul and other times where they made what seemed to be identical plays, no whistles were blown.

Are these types of calls subjective?  Is there a rule/standard? 

Seeing as this is a critical element to our defensive strategy, I for one would like to know when the call was "right" and when the refs blow it, so I can scream and rant appropriately.

Any help from BN would be appreciated?