Last night, I had the privilege of attending the naming ceremony of the UCLA Renee and Meyer Luskin School of Public Affairs, and wanted to share a couple of things about the experience.

Firstly: Villaraigosa gave a lazy, lousy, rambling speech, including messing up the pronunciation of the names of both Luskins before correcting himself. Pretty embarrassing all round. Chancellor Block gave a pretty formulaic read statement that hit the right topics, but wasn't impressive. Dean Frank Gilliam was effusive and engaging in his MC/raconteur role, and represents the School of Public Affairs well.

But more importantly - and the reason I even bother to write this - Meyer Luskin could not have been a more delightful person. He must be in his late 80s, but gave by far the best speech, threw in jokes that were incredibly well received, spoke movingly about the mission of UCLA and the School of Public Affairs in improving Los Angeles, California, the United States and the world, and was also incredibly humble. His closing comments were essentially "Renee and I have been very blessed in our lives, which has given us the tremendous privilege of being able to help others, and we could not have done any of this without this great university."

The $100 million donor ended his speech quietly and simply:

"Thank you, UCLA."

Assuming some of us want our standard BN gamethread experience without knowing the result in advance, here is a Fanpost you can bookmark now and visit later without going through the home page and seeing the score.

[apologies to the eds if this citizen action is unwelcome, I'm happy to take it down if it messes with the masterplan]

In the meantime, don't forget that an undertalented Bruin outfit knocked off Cal on the road last year -  

- so we should be on our guard against the return upset. (HT to SoCalOski from CGB for linking to that image...)

[comment reposted per request]

Just got back  Recently returned from my first trip to the Galen Center. It was an eyeopening experience.

We are a very, very soft team, physically but particularly mentally. We were outmuscled on the ball, and outmuscled off the ball. $c was niggling all game and we could not deal with it. Every time a referee makes a bad call, we totally overreact in our play – particularly when we are called for questionable charges, we stop taking it to the hoop. Smith took a couple of cheap shots off the ball and responded by bundling into a guy clumsily for his 4th foul. An older gentleman from $c told me that Smith gave the fans the bird as he was walking off the court at the end of the game – if so, Howland shouldn’t take him on the Oregon trip. He was surely frustrated with the abuse he was taking and the cheap foul calls against him, but if he really did that I am disgusted.

Lane was terrible; not strong enough on defense, a black hole on offense. Stover seems totally confused on both ends and doesn’t have enough ability to compensate. Watching him trying to set a screen, and TH halfheartedly trying to use it, was depressing.

Zeke clearly wasn’t on his game (mitigating factor being his injury), but we need him to be a serious scorer and assertive with the ball to do well. Anderson had a decent game off the bench with the odd lapse.

Nelson is up and down, as ever. His post defense was more effective than Lane or Stover insofar as he is less easy to push around. His offense runs hot and cold and he seems to force shots when he should pass and force passes to guys not expecting them.

I think Tyler Lamb will be good, but he is too deferential right now and still playing like a freshman.

I never felt like Lee wasn't trying hard, and I think with home refs he might have got a few more calls trying to force the issue offensively; but insofar as people think he has an NBA game, I don’t know what he does well enough to warrant that.

And, Honeycutt… is totally underachieving, making terrible decisions and not playing to his strengths. He needs to shoot the open 3s, not take two dribbles into a double team; he needs to move off the ball into gaps from which he can shoot or pass, not put his head down and try to take a smaller player off the dribble. Our guards need to take initiative, and Smith needs to stay on the court long enough to be creative in the offense, and that will allow TH to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. No player on our team fluctuates between grace and clumsiness like TH, from silky smooth to jarringly inept. A lot is on him, some is on his teammates.

Watching all the little battles on the court, it was clear $c wanted it more. Very depressing.

Bellerophon set out a well-reasoned post expressing many of the frustrations of UCLA fans, shining a spotlight on some of our glaring weaknesses, and advocating for some strong measures (including parting ways with Norm Chow) in a front page piece here.

While I understand the frustrations and acknowledge the problems, I respectfully disagree with the suggested courses of action. I also think that the Cal game was not a huge surprise, based on what we have seen from the team so far this season; and getting another three wins this season would also not be a big surprise. It was an embarrassing beatdown, but does not change my opinion much on the talent/quality/consistency/performance of our players and coaches. We could win up to 5 games going forward, or lose all 6 remaining, depending on "the little things". More detailed thoughts after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Calling for coaching heads is premature. CRN and CNC have both shown they can coach when they have talented players; and for the first time in a decade we are recruiting head to head with $C.

In year 5, we could have a team with a Junior Jones as a potential Heisman candidate at running back, Junior Owa causing havoc to opposing offenses, and either a senior QB running the third year of the revolver offense or a talented dual threat sophomore, protected by fourth-year body, second-year player XSF at LT.

I am not saying that Saturday was acceptable; and if CRN et al don't show signs of progress by the end of the season then who knows if DG will lose patience.

However, the comparisons to Lavin (who recruited well... due to UCLA basketball being an elite national brand and the preeminent SoCal program... and left us with a bare cupboard when CBH came in) and Dorrell (who wouldn't go after recruits that Cheatey was in on, and produced a single semi-successful season when he had an all-world running back, a potential future pro-bowler tight end and a senior quarterback; and left us with a bare cupboard when CRN came in) seem very premature. Maybe CRN will crash and burn in his own unique way, but throwing out the "CRN is just like [a coach who didn't succeed the way we wanted him to]" line is a weak analogy, and as yet unjustified.

Continue reading this post »

[This is a slightly modified repost of my comment in the post-game thread, per N's suggestion and in case anyone has any response now that that thread is closed; a lot of it is along the same lines as N posted on the front page this morning, so apologies if it is overly duplicative]

I am not sure whether the naysayers were reacting yesterday to DCBruins' notes of optimism, and after 9 months of anticipation people may have been a little overhyped, but I want to respond to some of the totally disproportionate anger and invective in the game and post-game threads.

There were some good things to say about yesterday. The primary thing is that even with a fraction of the OL personnel we might have hoped to have for this game when last season ended, our newly installed pistol offense allowed us to run the ball. This is GOOD COACHING. This is what CRN and CNC are paid to do. Some of the nonsense in the game and post-game threads about offensive play calling is unbelievable. Having watched us struggle to run the ball for 2 years, the run game today looked significantly better.

What killed us yesterday was our inability to make plays in the passing game. Two factors: receivers dropping catchable balls, and Prince looking pretty rusty (his stats would have been improved by receivers catching balls, but some of the throws and decisions were terrible). I am surprised Brehaut did not get at least a series or two. CRN showed a willingness to pull Prince last year, and by all indications Brehaut is in comparatively better shape to perform this year. Could it have made the passing game perfect with the way the receivers were playing? No. Could it have been an improvement on a fairly below par performance from Prince? Maybe. Seemed worth a shot to me.

On a separate subject: comments on Prince not being quick enough for the pistol also seem nonsensical. Is he a dual threat QB who is as good a running option as a running back? No. Is he a decent enough runner that defenders have to account for him? Yes – and if you don’t, he can run in a touchdown. The success of the running backs would not be possible if defenders didn’t have to respect Prince’s threat to run.

(much more after the jump...)

Continue reading this post »

Recent fanposts/fanshots have discussed DC's outstanding performances (including a recent 20 assist game) in the NO team normally led by CP3;  comments in other threads have discussed the merits of JF as a point guard playing within the triangle offense typically led by Derek Fisher.

Clearly there are massive differences in the style of teams these guys are playing in, so I thought it might be interesting to look and see what kind of numbers each Bruin was putting up in relation to the numbers normally posted by the starting guy. Take the numbers as you will - it clearly isn't a perfect comparison - but I thought it was interesting.

On a per-48-mins basis:

CP3: 25.3 pts, 13.9 assists, 3.1 TO, 2.8 Steals, FG% .504

DC: 21.3 pts, 9.7 assists, 4.8 TO, 2.0 Steals, FG% .465

DF: 13.1pts, 4.4 assists, 1.8 TO, 2.0 Steals, FG% .379

JF: 19.7pts, 4.2 assists, 2.5 TO, 1.8 Steals, FG% .447

Clearly DF mostly runs with Kobe et al, so doesn't take so many shots and most of those shots are from long range. It's interesting to me that at 35 years old he is apparently a better thief than JF. Also interesting to me that even though the NO offense is clearly much more high octane - more assists and likely more turnovers - the A/T ratios rank CP3>DF>DC>JF.

Was originally looking for my own interest, but thought I should share the numbers given I gathered them - I do not have any strong conclusions to draw, but thought others might have some interest.