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.