Do the Bruins have what it takes to get to the Final Four?
Recent weak performance makes future look bleak, yet team has a record of turnarounds late in season
BRIDGET O'BRIEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Matt Barnes battles against the UCR defense in a match played Dec. 5.
By Dylan Hernandez
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
This isn’t a Final Four team, that’s for sure.
The UCLA men’s basketball team is as far from earning a trip to Atlanta as T.J. Simers is from winning a Pulitzer Prize.
Heck, the Bruins that showed up to play against Ball State, Pepperdine and UC Riverside probably wouldn’t even make the NCAA Tournament.
The expectation, of course, is that the team will make a run in the second half of the season, as it seems to have done every year under head coach Steve Lavin. Because of that, expectations for the Bruins, who began the season as a top-10 team nationally, really haven’t been lowered.
Lavin himself has openly spoken of – even joked about – his team’s early-season failures, creating a sense that there is no need to panic. Following his team’s surprisingly close win over Riverside last week, he called himself the “worst November coach in college basketball history.” For Lavin and the Bruins, however, this admittance that they aren’t a good early-season team has almost become an alibi for them to mask that the fact that some of their ailments aren’t necessarily curable.
The team returns four starters: three-point specialist Billy Knight at two-guard, All-American Jason Kapono at small forward, athletic Matt Barnes at power forward and strong but erratic Dan Gadzuric at center. Also back are key reserves T.J. Cummings, a forward/center, and Rico Hines, a guard.
The one vacant starting position is at point guard, where UCLA has not yet found an adequate replacement for 2000-01 senior team captain Earl Watson, who is now playing in the NBA for the Seattle Sonics. The Bruins thought they had their man when they brought in prep All-American Cedric Bozeman from Mater Dei High School in nearby Santa Ana, but at the Maui Invitational and in a home loss to Pepperdine that followed, Bozeman hardly resembled a top-flight Division I point guard. The true freshman looked a step slow, couldn’t shoot from outside, and had difficulty going left.
“I thought with four starters returning, that would be enough,” Knight said. “Earl was the heart and soul of the team. I didn’t realize everything he did until now.”
After the Pepperdine game, however, it was found that Bozeman had played been playing with a torn meniscus in his right knee since the tournament opener in Maui. Although he’ll be out of action for a month while recovering from a successful surgery, the fact that Bozeman was injured in Hawaii gives the team some hope: the Cedric Bozeman they played with wasn’t the real Cedric Bozeman; there’s a chance he can actually play.
“It made sense,” Hines said. “In (fall) practice, he used to turn the corner and dunk on people.”
Playing hurt earned Bozeman his teammates’ respect and there’s little question that they will accept him back into the lineup when he’s ready to return.
“We know he played through an injury,” Knight said. “Some guys on this team are slight. A little something hurts and they take themselves out. I don’t think (Bozeman) missed a single practice.”
Yet with or without Bozeman, the team lacks quickness. The starters are all listed as being 6 feet, 6 inches or taller, making it difficult for them to guard smaller, quicker players, especially along the perimeter.
“Our biggest weakness right now is containing the dribble,” Lavin said.
That doesn’t mean the team is strong inside. The Bruins, by and large, are a lean group, and a dominant big man would probably give them a lot trouble, the way Ball State’s Lonnie Jones did. UCLA is hoping that Gadzuric, the one wide body on the team, will establish himself as an inside presence, but so far, most of his better moments have come when he’s been facing a shorter and weaker center.
UCLA’s collection of tweeners has had trouble stopping anyone, with the exception of Riverside, which is playing its first official season as a Division I school.
“We just haven’t been as aggressive,” Hines said. “We’re just falling back.”
And without Kapono’s will, the offense could end up in a similar state. Barnes and Gadzuric, both hampered by slight injuries, have done little in the paint. Knight has been spectacular hitting threes from the corners, but he still appears to be mostly a stationary shooter. Freshmen reserves Andre Patterson and Dijon Thompson bring a lot of energy to the floor, but are prone to missing gimmes, and Cummings hasn’t found his stroke since his big game against South Carolina in Maui. The only consistent source of scoring has been Kapono, who, even when having trouble getting his jumper off, has forced his way inside. Obviously lacking from the team is a penetrator, which, the Bruins hope, Bozeman can be.
So here are the Bruins, at the start of December, looking as if they are about to get plowed through by whomever they play. Some observers, perhaps, aren’t surprised to see the team in this predicament, given Lavin’s past record.
But this time, Lavin may have the battle of his career in front of him. This time, he’s in for a tough one, even by his standards.
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