• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Photo

  Jeff Agase Now that it's IM softball season, Agase's eyes well with tears when he looks at the IM Field. E-mail him at agase@ucla.edu with some soothing words. Click Here for more articles by Jeff Agase

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT — So this, as they say, is how it ends: sitting in a seedy airport bar, watching the second half of the UCLA-Missouri game on a janky 13-inch TV, sipping a three-dollar Coke, trying to ignore some punk shouting at 130 decibels on his cell phone.

And seeing the Bruins exit arena left in the Sweet 16. Again.

Same old story. Same old Bruins.

Just when you finally thought that romantic naivete for this team wouldn’t break your already partitioned heart, the Bruins drive yet another spike down the middle of it, shattering it into still more unrecognizable pieces.

Sure, there’s still enough left to mount another torrent of passion next season, but honestly, this flirtation bit is starting to wear thin.

Come on Bruins, quit playin’ games with our hearts. Whoops. I think I owe a boy band some royalty money for that.

No matter, though. Not now. I’m still coming to grips with the fact that I, for a fleeting instant, pondered whether a weekend of basketball in San Jose was somehow superior to my upcoming week in London.

Why?

It was probably that force – those four days of pre-Sweet 16 anticipation many of us have enjoyed for three straight years now – that had its way of turning even the most ardent skeptics into anxious fanatics who couldn’t help but let their eyes wander all the way to the end of that suddenly winnable West bracket. I regret to say I was one of them.

Was I missing out on something huge?

After all, this was a No. 12 seed UCLA was playing. Sure, it was a Missouri team peaking higher than any hoity-toity one or two seed, but it was still a No. 12. The past two years of the Sweet 16 had brought the Bruins longshot upset opportunities but also little hope of playing a second game that weekend.

This year was different, right? This time, Duke was already toast and the “what-if” machine was kicking into high gear by the time Matt Barnes went on a one-man rampage to power the Bruins to a seven-point lead.

This year was different, right? Not only were the Bruins playing a lower seed in a tournament the “experts” (and even rubes like me) predicted they should have already exited, but they were looking like legitimate Final Four contenders – and like a team.

Cedric Bozeman, a kid who just recently earned the right to vote but might have been elected de facto mayor of Westwood after a titanic win over Cincinnati, had helped to pull together a collection of disinterested and apathetic individuals into maybe the most feared team left in the tourney.

This year was different, right?

Well no, not really. How silly we all were, once again, to get whisked away into Bruin Fever, robotically nodding our heads to all of the things they were saying in the papers and on TV.

But to our credit, it is the silliness that makes the one time your heart is left intact all the more satisfying. Imagine the Cubs finally winning the World Series, but on a smaller scale. After all these teases, that’s what it would be like if the Bruins won the Pac-10 or even (heaven forbid) the national championship in the near future.

Now, the bad thing about the Daily Bruin not publishing Friday of 10th Week (and myself having to write a story a week and half after the game) is that it’s not exactly what big important journalists like my boss Scott Schultz call “timely.”

The good thing – besides, of course, the fact that I was able to completely forget about the Daily Bruin and try my best to deplete metropolitan London’s entire beer reserve – is that it allows an opportunity for some reflection and forward thinking.

Awww, “reflection and forward thinking.” Isn’t that cute?

Although it may sound like it was ripped straight from a post-Clinton scandal press release, I have something slightly less trivial to say.

The loss of at least three starters (Barnes, Billy Knight, Dan Gadzuric) and possibly a fourth (Jason Kapono) means that we’re likely in store for another woefully unpredictable first few months of the 2002-03 season.

But ridiculous as they seemed at the time, Steve Lavin’s NHL-style substitution patterns gave at least six returning players significant minutes, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more experienced pair of sophomore point guards than Bozeman and Ryan Walcott.

They will struggle early, that much is clear. Should Kapono return, the starting lineup would be some five-man combination of Kapono, Ray Young, Bozeman, Dijon Thompson, T.J. Cummings, and newcomer Mike Fey, with Andre Patterson, Walcott, and transfer Jon Crispin off the bench.

But if Kapono bolts for the NBA, the Bruins will be left with one senior (who redshirted this season) and only 26 percent of their scoring.

Kapono’s decision could be the difference between championship contention in the Pac-10 and clawing for an NCAA Tournament berth.

But hey, cheer up! Football season’s only five months away!

I’m sorry. That’s probably not the best way to brighten your mood.

Well, it MIGHT make you feel a little better to adopt a conveniently optimistic characteristic of British soccer fans that I discovered while across the pond. You see, no matter how well a local Premier League club does, what’s really important is how the country performs.

Manchester United may lose in the semifinals of the playoffs, but if England makes a run in the World Cup, all is redeemed.

Which means, by moronically twisted logic, that no matter who wins tonight, we UCLA fans can rejoice in the fact that the champion will be American.

Please note the flagrant capitalization three paragraphs above. Hey, I tried.