Put to rest all thoughts and pipe dreams of a potential at-large berth to the tournament. If the Bruins were walking a tightrope before, following the 73-63 drubbing Cal gave Ben Howland's listless, confused, hapless team, that rope has snapped. Against a marginally talented but well coached Bears squad, the Bruins put on a performance eerily reminiscent of the first game up in Berkeley: A somewhat close game blown wide open right after halftime.

Howland's other chance to make the tournament also took a major hit. At 7-6 in conference, the Bruins are now 2 games out of 4th place in the loss column, and are looking squarely at the four wins in four days road to the play-in game. How exciting.

Though the game was close in the first half, the signs of the impending meltdown were all there. The Bruins played disinterested and selfishly. Aimless passing around the perimeter and ill fated one on one drives were all the offense UCLA seemed to be able to muster, and but for a few lucky shots by Lazeric Jones, the game probably would have been over at halftime.

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Given the total irrelevancy of UCLA Basketball this season, you can understand why Fox Sports would feel their viewership would be better served showing a women's basketball game between Central Florida and Memphis, and even worse, a Clippers game, over the marquee collegiate basketball program on the west coast. Due to that, I was personally unable to watch this team finally end their streak of futility outside of SoCal (box score).

Maybe through the power of hindsight, we can conclude that we should have had our home games somewhere in the state of Washington. Then maybe we'd get some kind of performance out of Joshua Smith, who again had a big impact in his home state with 19 points on 8-9 shooting before fouling out.

From the comments, I can safely deduce that we actually played zone, and the score tells me that we finally won a game outside of Southern California in our 23rd game of the season.

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Well it's official. Our basketball team is better than USC's. Behind hot three point shooting from Tyler Lamb, Norman Powell, and Jerime Anderson, the Bruins took a game that had been tight before halftime and put Colorado away early in the second half . Although the Buffaloes shot 46% from the floor, CU didn't seem as effective offensively as that number indicates.

Overall, the Bruins were 9-13 from 3 point territory, spreading the CU defense and opening up the rest of the floor, which resulted in UCLA's 60% overall shooting. Maybe the only complaint you could have about the game overall was the trademarked bad start for the Bruins, spotting Colorado an early lead with their lethargic play.

What made this game seem different, IMO, was that our two non-point-guards played like point guards. Lazeric Jones tallied 9 assists, Anderson had 8, and even Lamb chipped in 6. It's always more fun to watch a team with guards that make good decisions and distribute the ball.

Maybe if we had played like this before the 21st game of the season, this season, and our embattled coach's lame duck tenure, would have a much brighter outlook. However, this is the hand that the Bruins have dealt themselves. As we hinted earlier, Colorado is not a team with the talent to match their record. We expected this victory, as did Vegas and the other gamblers out there.

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Today's riveting matchup between the mediocre-by-record UCLA Bruins and the mediocre-everywhere-but-the-record Colorado Buffaloes promises to be a exciting interesting important game.

The stakes are quite high...for Colorado. The Buffs will attempt to continue to outplay their metrics and stay in the hunt for an inaugural Pac-12 Championship with a second conference road victory at Chianti Dan Guerrero's Garbage Arena. Meanwhile, the Bruins will try to keep their heads above water in the conference standings. Sitting at 4-4 with the Ben Howland Bermuda Triangle Washington roadtrip on deck, UCLA needs to take advantage of this prime opportunity to pick up a win.

(Ancient) history will be on the Bruins' side today. From the official preview:

This is the sixth meeting between UCLA and Colorado with the Bruins leading the series 4-1. UCLA is 4-0 all-time in games contested in Los Angeles. The Bruins won the last meeting, 104-70 in Pauley Pavilion on Dec. 2, 1977.

UCLA comes into this game as 8 point favorites. Game will be shown on Prime Ticket.

No, we're not delusional enough to tag that description to this year's UCLA team. This refers to our opponents, going from the Pac-11 (excluding Division II-level USC) cellar dwelling Utah to the surprise of the conference season: the tied-for-first-place Colorado Buffaloes.

After a spectacular night full of exhilarating one-sided romps in the Pac-12, the reviews coming in on our own blowout are predictably bland and pedestrian.

Joshua Smith scored 14 points, while Jerime Anderson and David Wear both scored 13. UCLA shot 58.7% in what amounted to a extra practice session before its game Saturday against Colorado, which is in a four-way tie for first place.

"This was a real confidence booster for us," Wear said.

The Utes have been a care package in high-tops for much of the season. They have been pummeled by Colorado (73-33) and California (81-45). The Bruins joined that crowd, taking control of the game with a 14-4 run that gave them a 36-21 lead at halftime.

Also as expected, we're hearing the same old hints about turning the corner, particularly in regards to a certain center:

"Josh was a difference-maker for us tonight," Howland said. "He was very motivated after last weekend."

Motivation? Or having a 100 lb and 4 inch height advantage on your defenders? We've been fooled once by this mirage. No longer. I want to see what this guy does when the competition level goes up.

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Can you feel the excitement excreting from Chianti Dan's (Funeral) Home Court? Well that's raw sewage, but you'd be forgiven if you mistook it for the quality of opponent trotted out at the Sports Arena tonight. As we have mentioned before, the Utah Utes are a woefully bad team, and as it will be with many games from here on out, it will really only be news if we lose.

UCLA shot 59% and Utah was held to 37% (box score). UCLA got to do basically whatever they wanted on both ends of the floor. Utah tried to do things, like matchup zone, and didn't do anything particularly well. Again, not surprising.

Josh Smith once again proved he can dominate terrible teams (14 points, 5-6 shooting), and the question of whether Howland would bench Anthony Stover (2 points, 6 rebounds, 2 blocks) for tweeting what we were all thinking anyway about the Oregon game was answered in the negative.

Maybe it's the proclamation earlier from Howland himself that the regular season essentially didn't matter anymore, but never did that seem more true than tonight, and the crowd (and our thread) pretty much agreed with that assessment.

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UCLA's season long flirtation with .500 ball continues. At 9-9 against Division 1 teams and 3-4 in conference, the Bruins are officially mediocre. The worst part is that the team had figured out a blueprint for success and completely ignored it down the stretch and Oregon seized advantage and sent the Bruins home once again without a conference road victory (box score).

The first half was an impressive rebound from Thursday's defenseless debacle. UCLA held Oregon to 23% shooting in the half and were efficient everywhere but the free throw line and where Joshua Smith was involved. The most impressive player of the first half was Anthony Stover, who despite not having the big numbers in the box score was an intimidating force in the middle, freeing our perimeter players to gamble a little more and not have to help in the post. Stover tallied 3 blocks before halftime playing extended meaningful minutes with Smith's foul trouble. The rest of the team besides Smith did their parts offensively, and the Wears even impressed with their effort on the defensive glass. It looked like a healthy mix of Stover, three guards, and a Wear would be enough to carry the 13 point halftime lead to the end.

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I realize that I'm slowly getting older in many ways. One of the signs of this is that I'm actually old enough to remember when sports fans nationwide almost universally loved ESPN. This concept is completely foreign in today's world, and it's likely one of the things that separate me from any of the current undergraduates of my alma mater. Newsweek magazine/The Daily Beast's Nick Summers recently documented the WWL's rise from humble cable channel to sports kingmaker, which has disturbing implications for us all.

A dozen San Francisco 49ers are rehearsing their explosive movements on the grass, elephantine and precise, a sight that is astonishing to see. Fans are massing just above field level and screaming.

But not for the athletes. They’re hollering—"Steeeeeeeeeeeve!"—for the talent of ESPN. The cable-sports juggernaut has built a satellite set for its Monday Night Countdown pregame show off the 20-yard line, and nearby, four of its highly recognizable stars—Steve Young, Jerry Rice, Trent Dilfer, and Stuart Scott—are tossing a football before airtime. Young and Rice, both retired Hall of Fame 49ers, are local heroes; when Young, in cakey TV makeup, arcs a tight spiral to Rice, the Niner faithful go ape like it’s for real. "There’s more fans here than in the stands," murmurs a photographer.

It's understandable that before the game, fans may want to see a couple of legends of the very franchise they came out watch, but what is being described here is very clear: ESPN is the story. The game is the backdrop. It would escape notice if this was an isolated incident. Does anyone remember Craig James? Those that advocated for Mike Leach to be our coach following the termination of Rick Neuheisel surely do. Mr. James used his son who was on Leach's Texas Tech football team to lodge an exaggerated complaint about how Leach was handling his son's injury. Amplified through his position as an ESPN anchor and fully utilizing the bully pulpit it provides, the atmosphere around Leach became toxic so quickly that Texas Tech felt they had reason to let him go. Again, ESPN, their anchors, and their "personalities" are the story. Everyone else just tries to not get swept away in the flood.

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So much for the line in Vegas and the tough 13 mile trek across town (or the hop skip and a jump from the cesspool we currently call "home"). The Bruins used a late first half surge to blitz the Trogans, leaving them dumbfounded, stunned, and with no answers, delivering a solid 66-47 pounding (box score).

As many complaints as we've heard about UCLA's offense throughout the Ben Howland era, leave it to usc to show us what offensive ineptitude really looks like. A team as discombobulated and disjointed as the Trogans makes it really difficult to tell how effective our defense was. There were as many signs of the Bruins being active and moving their feet and being in good position as there were signs that usc may have had trouble achieving tonight's score in an empty gym. Besides more poor decisions, especially early on, from Joshua Smith on his fouls, there isn't a lot to complain about when a team suffocates offensively like the Trogans did. usc's hobbit-like guard Maurice Jones led the Trogans with 13 points, but clearly lost the overall battle of the Joneses to Lazeric Jones. Maurice was also their best offensive weapon. It was that kind of night.

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It's been a long, odd, frustrating season so far. Part of that weirdness is the scheduling of the John R. Wooden Classic being a conference matchup at the Honda Center rather than a marquee nonconference tilt as it normally is. We also learned before the game that Joshua Smith would not be available for the first time this season (in body, but not really in mind). This deprived the Bruins of a potentially favorable matchup against the undersized Wildcats.

Then the Wears happened.

Whether it was the spirit of Coach getting the 6' 10" twins to finally play like they were 6' 10" or merely the knowledge that Smith would not be there weighing down the offense and anchoring their defense, the Wears collectively put together a game on both ends of the floor that made me want more from them for the first time all season.

Indeed, for the first 30 minutes of the game, it was not only the Wears, but the majority of the team that could seem to do no wrong. UCLA exploited its height advantage repeatedly (what a concept...), which led to a nearly 50% shooting percentage for the most of the game while holding the Wildcats under 40%.

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Well that was pathetic.

Normally, after yet another embarrassing blowout in Ben Howland's recent history, we'd go and dissect the performance and what went wrong and what needs to be done to fix it. But really, what we saw just seems like a manifestation of all that we've been saying ever since the season began about our problems, and so there's really not a lot to say.

On one hand, Tyler Lamb was hot for most of the game, getting 26 points on 15 shots including 5 three pointers. On the other hand, he was part of a backcourt that surrendered 49 points on 60% shooting to their backcourt counterparts on Cal.

It sure wouldn't be fair to single out the guards when it came to surrendering baskets. The Bears shot 65% for the entire game overall , so obviously defensive ineptitude was not dependent on position. What is especially sad and disgusting about this team is that for all the argument about whether the Man to Man or Zone defense is appropriate for this team, the team itself came out and rendered that argument irrelevant. Evidently it doesn't matter what we play, because we are equally terrible at both. Uncontested 3s and shoddy interior defense are the new hallmarks of Ben Howland's defensive strategy, and it doesn't matter what you call it at this point, unless you want to call it a four letter word of some sort.

There are no moral victories and no excuses. Just a weak, pathetic, shameful 0-2 start with Arizona up on deck next at Honda Center.

A turning point? In the second game of the Pac-12 season? Well yes, that tends to happen when you limp into this game at 6-6 against Division I competition. Beating BN's predicted winner of the conference on the road is going to be a tough task, but it's also tough trying to dig out of an 0-2 conference hole to win the Pac-12. Without getting into the details of "expectations vs. predictions", let's just say that Ben Howland and his team had better find a way to end this disastrous year for Bruin athletics on a high note, or you'll only see the Hot Seat talk intensify.

All teams have questions surrounding them, but the questions surrounding the Bruins at this late stage are of great concern. Will we handicap our own chances of success by rolling out a 2x Wear Man to Man? Will our point guard play value ball movement and distribution over shot hunting? Will we hold players accountable for taking defensive plays off and failing to block out and secure rebounds? Will this year's Bruins finally grab a NCAA Tournament resume building win, rather than feasting off of cupcakes?

This game is a turning point, and the way we answer the questions above could go a long way in determining whether this team continues to walk the tenuous path to a Tournament berth or goes into a death spiral. We're all about to get some answers soon. Let's close 2011 out the right way.

"They are who we thought they were"

Davis, that is. UC Davis played true to form and showed us why they are winless against Division 1 competition. That's the context we'll have to use when judging the performances of our team this afternoon.

That said, remember when the questions we used to ask weren't whether we would win or lose but how we would win? I miss those days, but for one afternoon, we got a glimpse of those days again. The catalyst for the Bruins burying the Aggies early came from the unlikeliest of sources.

Joshua Smith has taken a lot of heat from our (and pretty much everyone else's) camp. The disappointment in his conditioning can't be overstated and his lack of aggression and engagement has been the biggest reason this team is underperforming. This was an opponent tailor made for Smith to dominate: undersized and unathletic. We've had other teams that fit that description where Smith renders himself a non-factor. Not today. Josh scored 6 points in the first 3 minutes of the game to help put the Bruins up 10-0 and stamp this game as "ours" from the outset.

By the time walkon Kenny Jones took the floor late in the first half, the game was in hand, and barring a letdown or sloppily played second half that would not be forthcoming, we had seen what we needed to see to conclude that the Bruins are indeed capable of putting together a solid game.

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Here we go again. UCLA takes on another supposedly outmatched opponent in the 1-8 UC Davis Aggies at the Honda Center. 10 games into the season, the Bruins will also have an opportunity to sniff .500 ball for the first time this season. As disturbing as that fact may be for a team near the end of the first third of the season, it's really not as disturbing or scary that we're still talking about wanting to see this team do some basic things correctly.

At least with the team improving marginally on defense, applying some zone defense, and playing some really bad teams, UCLA's D isn't the complete trainwreck style embarrassment it used to be, at least until it's time to get the rebound and end the possession. As DCBruins mentioned in our preview, we're especially thin now at the PF spot, but against a team like UC Davis, we will still expect to see solid improvement in our defensive rebounding.

Three weeks ago, I posted some of our abysmal rankings following our loss to Michigan in the Maui Invitational. Despite playing a relatively soft schedule since then, our numbers have gotten worse. Time is running out for this team to start putting together solid and consistent performances to carry them through the conference slate. That gives this game a very odd significance. If it doesn't happen this afternoon against a 1 win team at "home", can we ever really expect it to happen?

Tipoff is 12 PM PST and will be on Prime Ticket.

So Lazeric Jones played well (19 points on 10 shots, 6 rebs, 4 ast, 3 stl). So did Anthony Stover. Not coincidentally, these (and maybe Powell when he was in) are the only players that played like they gave a damn tonight. With the Sports Arena doing its best to give off a Library vibe, Eastern Washington decided to employ the Ben Howland patented up-by-a-dozen-in-the-middle-of-the-second-half take the air out of the ball offense...in the first half. It was truly awful. The Eagles shot under 30% in the first half, and the Bruins can't really take the credit for it. EWU's players in the halfcourt could not dribble, could not pass, couldn't drive. That is not a winning strategy. The one thing they could do, however, was rebound, and make the Bruins look awful doing so.

This is not a new problem, but the lack of boxing out and overall defensive awareness went to new levels today. UCLA was outrebounded by 8 with 16 offensive rebounds given up to a EWU team that the Bruins have a moderate size advantage over. Size obviously not a substitute for heart or desire though, because EWU used all those extra possessions to make a game of it in the second half. The team that shot under 30% and was 1-10 from 3 made a game of it. Jerime Anderson had a lowlight reel of poorly taken shots that seem to indicate that he is no longer comfortable with his jumper as he was in the beginning of the year. It seems there's a rule that we are only allowed one confident point guard at a time.

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The Bruins return to the "friendly" confines of the LA Sports Arena to take on Eastern Washington. The "Road Show" as it has been called has been a disaster in this particular venue with a 1-3 record, the lone win coming against lowly Pepperdine. It goes without saying that win #2 had better be forthcoming tonight. As we noted in our preview, the Eagles are a marginally better team than Penn. While UCLA appeared to have the clear upper hand throughout in our last game in the Honda Center, Penn was able to keep it close at the end and pull to within two possessions. Even if Penn rode some hot, and some would say lucky, shooting to get there, making superstars out of average players seems to be what this year's edition of the Bruins does best.

Nothing seems to come easy for UCLA these days, but at least we will get Anthony Stover back after the foot injury he sustained against Penn that kept him out of the second half. De'End Parker is still out with tendinitis.

The pregame show has also indicated that Travis Wear will not play tonight with an infection in his foot.

Tipoff is 7:30 PST and will be on Fox Sports West.

With all the turmoil surrounding the UCLA Basketball program, it probably felt good for the players to take the court again and finally play some basketball. The Bruins were able to withstand a late rally from Penn and hold on for a 77-73 victory. Perhaps this team can take a cue from their gridiron counterparts and "Burn the Boats", rallying around a remade roster and a radically changed rotation to spur a change in their play.

Good news first. For the sake of the season, we have to hope that this game is an indication that Lazeric Jones' early season shooting woes are over. Zeek's 20 points came only 10 shots and included 3-3 from beyond the arc. Many of the shots he made were difficult, which brings up questions about shot selection, but it's much easier to take when the shots are falling. He still dominates the ball way too much for my liking, especially for a guard with below average court vision, but we sure could use his offense, because our offensive sets were generally quite ugly.

Without Reeves, as expected, we saw a lot more Wears. They started at 4 and 5 (thankfully not at 3) and did a serviceable job on offense now that their shot selection is improving. They are still incredibly frustrating to watch on defense though. If they put as much effort into their defensive rebounding, boxing out and fighting for position, as they did hunting for offensive rebounds, the ceiling on this team would be much higher. They're going to play a lot more now, that's just the reality. They need to protect our defensive glass better.

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It's never a good sign when most of the news coming out of your programs have nothing to do with playing the actual games. Once again, another bombshell overshadows an actual game with the news that troubled forward Reeves Nelson has been dismissed from the team. The silver lining, if there is one, for the remainder of the team is that he hadn't been contributing much anyway up to his dismissal, but it's hard to imagine that this kind of turmoil will be a net positive even if Nelson's absence helps team chemistry.

Nelson has been a polarizing figure throughout his time as a Bruin, and it was always difficult to determine the "best" way to handle him. There were his issues as a player; the sometimes brilliant play mixed with equal parts inconsistent effort. This was often conflated and paired with his issues as a person; the temper, blowing up at teammates, etc. It's a complex problem, but unfortunately here at UCLA it all traces back to the same root cause: a lack of accountability.

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There has been a lot of talk about how the Pac-12 was weak this year based on some of the very early returns. After all, UA was looking particularly vulnerable, as was Cal after getting pasted by Missouri. I don't think our struggles need any further mention. That's the supposed "class" of the Pac-12 stinking it up on the hardwood, and it wasn't too much of a stretch to assume that the conference race would degenerate into a tickle fight.

Well a month into the season, and while Howland's ragtag bunch are saying goodbye to SI coverboy Reeves Nelson for a second time in two weeks, the rest of the conference is slowly pulling themselves together.

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