SB Nation User Blog: solidgoldsound

Thoughts on the Humbolt State game

solidgoldsound — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 07:56:35 -0000

Pauley Pavillion was pretty packed for an exhibition game. It started to empty out however in the middle of the second half.

I wanted to point out some things that I noticed in this game that you might not hear on the news reports.

The game was a defensively sloppy one for UCLA, but offensively we shot extremely well. Although our fist possesion looked bad, it was clear after the first minute that this was going to be an easy win.

Darren Collison looked slow in the first half, but I think coach gave him a little talkin'-to because he definitely picked up the speed in the second half. He has a lot of work to do if he's going to carry the load of a PG this season.

The play of Russel Westbrook was the highlight of the game. He's going to be a major factor this season. There was one play where he went coast-to-coast shimmying his way through Lumberjack defenders to the hoop like a running back. There was however a stint where he was leading a bunch of reserves on the floor and everyone looked a little lost. Time will fix this.

Afflalo and Shipp had their usual solid game.

I was pretty impressed by Humbolt State. I hope that this is not going to be a trend throughout the upcoming season, but UCLA was schooled on multiple occasions inside by this supposedly inferior team. This was definitely the Achilles heel of our team last season. I'm actually quite worried about it. We made Cy Vandermeer look pretty good. Wright was defending him most of the time. I don't think we'll get much better even with Lorenzo Mata back. We may not have a dominating inside game until next year with K-Love coming in.

Nikola Dragovic looked like a pretty good all-around player. He got burned defensively a couple of times, but coach Howland will take care of that problem. He's noticeable on the floor because he wears signature "knee-high" socks. Allen Iverson-style... :)

UCLA looked very good considering it's only an exhibition game. This is going to be a good season!

Check out this pin!

solidgoldsound — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 20:00:05 -0000

A fellow long-time season ticket holder sitting in front of us had this pin on his hat. I love it.

U$C's use of fake crowd noise

solidgoldsound — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 23:40:34 -0000

This had to have been a topic on this board at some point.

Is USC's use of fake crowd noise at the Coliseum during its home games legal?

Having gone to several UCLA-USC games at the Coliseum, I couldn't get over the fact that the fake crowd noise was giving USC an unfair edge at home. If you've never heard it before, they run simulated crowd noise through the stadium loudspeakers on every opposing team's play after the opposing team breaks the huddle until the ball is snapped.

I found some articles in the NCAA rulebook that might make this practice illegal. If anybody else can help out, I think the results would be interesting.

From 2004 NCAA Football Rules and Interpretations

Persons Subject to the Rules
Rule 1-1-6. All players, substitutes, replaced players, coaches, trainers, cheerleaders in uniform, band members in uniform, mascots in uniform, commercial mascots, public-address announcers, audio and video system operators, and other persons affiliated with the teams or institutions are subject to the rules and shall be governed by the decisions of the officials.
Affiliated persons are those authorized within the team area.

Rule 1-2-1-b5 Persons subject to the rules, including bands, shall not create any noise that prohibits a team from hearing its signals (Rule 1-1-6).

PENALTY--Dead-ball foul. 15 yards [S7, S27] from the succeeding spot. Flagrant offenders, if players or substitutes, shall be disqualified
[S47].

Bottom line is: A team like 'SC doesn't need additional help from fake crowd noise. What the heck are they doing? If this is illegal, we can spring it on them next year at the rivalry game.

Go Bruins!