Photo: Christine Cotter Los Angeles Times December 12, 2009Mississippi State's Phil Turner attempts to block a shot off UCLA's Tyler Honeycutt. Honeycutt finished with six points and Turner had no blocks, but the Bulldogs won big, 72-54, in the afternoon game of the John R. Wooden Classic at the Honda Center.
(That looks like Malcolm, though)
Bruins' loss to Mississippi State is a real eyesore
UCLA falls to 2-6 with a 72-54 blowout defeat at the Wooden Classic, as the event's legendary namesake watches every misstep.
By David Wharton
The Los Angeles Times
December 13, 2009
When the UCLA players gather at Pauley Pavilion today, they can expect a different sort of film session.
Instead of simply reviewing their most recent game, or analyzing an upcoming opponent, they will watch Bruins teams from past seasons.
Teams that parlayed tough defense and a patient offense into winning records. Teams that marched deep into the NCAA tournament.
"Our younger kids, in particular, need to see it," Coach Ben Howland said. "So they see how it's supposed to be done."
And how it wasn't done Saturday, when the Bruins put up no discernible fight in falling to Mississippi State, 72-54, in the afternoon game of the John R. Wooden Classic at the Honda Center.
Adding insult to the injury of a fifth consecutive loss, this one transpired before Wooden himself, the legendary coach sitting in a box above midcourt.
"It really hurts me that he was here today and we played so poorly," Howland said. "You just don't want to disappoint Coach Wooden, and I feel like we've done that."
In a young season slipping from bad to worse -- their record now at 2-6 -- the Bruins looked sadly familiar, especially on offense, where they made only 34.9% of their shots.
It did not help that they faced an opponent that switched adeptly on defense and also had forward Jarvis Varnado, leading the nation in blocked shots. The 6-foot-9 senior announced his presence midway through the first half by swatting a ball into the second row.
As Mississippi State Coach Rick Stansbury explained: "We always know we've got the big guy taking care of things around the hole."
The Bulldogs (7-2) also have a reputation for raining three-pointers, and that's what helped put this game away before halftime.
UCLA had managed to stay within a basket through the first five minutes before Mississippi State guards Barry Stewart and Ravern Johnson made consecutive shots from long range.
"It kind of takes the air out of the balloon," UCLA guard Michael Roll said.
Mississippi State, on its way to shooting 47.5% for the game, soon expanded the lead to 21 points and the outcome was never in doubt.
Not with Johnson on his way to a game-high 29 points. Not with this UCLA team.
"No question, coming here and not just getting the win, but getting it the way we got it, was probably the most surprising thing," Stansbury said.
Were there some positives to take away from this performance?
The Bruins managed a slight edge in rebounds and turnovers. Roll played hard, leading his team with 17 points.
But starting forward Nikola Dragovic shot 0 for 9, finishing with zero points and one rebound in 29 minutes.
And, once again, UCLA stumbled at the free-throw line, making only six of 13.
Freshman Reeves Nelson had an early foul shot sail wide right by a foot.
All of which leads to an unusual film session today, suggested by junior guard Mustafa Abdul-Hamid.
"I'm going to take it to heart," Howland said. "Maybe it is a good idea."
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Mississippi St. 72, UCLA 54
espn.com
Associated Press
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Ravern Johnson scored a career-high 29 points, Jarvis Varnado blocked seven shots and Mississippi State rolled to a 72-54 victory over UCLA in the Wooden Classic on Saturday.
Varnado also had 13 points and 11 rebounds as the Bulldogs (7-2) won their fourth straight, taking a 21-point lead at halftime and cruising to Mississippi State's first-ever victory over UCLA.
Michael Roll scored 17 points and Malcolm Lee had 16 for the Bruins (2-6), who lost their fifth straight in discouraging fashion.
After hanging with top-ranked Kansas last weekend, UCLA shot poorly and couldn't stay close to the Bulldogs during the second game of a doubleheader honoring John Wooden, the 99-year-old former Bruins coach.
Observations from Saturday
By Andy Katz
College Basketball Nation Blog
espn.com
December, 12, 2009 Dec 127:24PM
UCLA is officially toast. The Bruins have no shot to get in the NCAA tournament unless they win the Pac-10 tournament. Seriously, even if the Bruins were to win the Pac-10, the question will be what have they done? It’s early but it’s not too soon to announce this after the Bruins were rocked once again in the city of Anaheim, this time in a different venue (Honda Center) and by another team (Mississippi State) by double figures (72-54). The Bruins are now 0-4 in Anaheim.
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Howland needs to build for future
By JIM ALEXANDER
The Press-Enterprise
10:00 PM PST on Saturday, December 12, 2009
ANAHEIM - It's even uglier than we thought.
We knew, and I think deep down even Ben Howland knew, that this was going to be a difficult year for UCLA's basketball Bruins.
But difficult has turned into torturous, and a 72-54 loss to Mississippi State in Saturday's Wooden Classic further exposed the inexperience, the physical immaturity and the talent deficit these Bruins face.
So it's time to ask the question. With five straight losses, a 2-6 record and five freshmen and sophomores among the top seven players, at what point does the coach decide it's prudent to get a head start on developing his team for 2010-11?
"Well, we're going to compete in every game to the best of our ability," Howland said. "Of course, the younger players in our program are going to get to play. We think we've got some kids that have a chance. But the tough part about that is we still want to win every game we can, so it's a fine line here."
No, the words "rebuilding year" did not cross his lips. But they didn't have to.
Understand, a preponderance of young players in college basketball doesn't have to spell doom. But these Bruins, hammered by defections of freshmen to the NBA draft the past two years (Kevin Love in '08, Jrue Holiday in '09), are walking proof of why recruiting rankings sometimes lie. Take away the two departed stars, and what's left is ordinary.
And at UCLA, they don't do ordinary well.
To help hurry the kids along, Howland said he'd break out video of better teams and better years in the coming weeks, showing his players "how to" examples to accompany the "how not to" plays from this year's games.
The conundrum here is that the freshmen and sophomores need to understand what's expected of them. Senior Michael Roll said he's not entirely sure they do.
"Coming from high school, things are so different -- everyday sacrifices, not being able to go out and live a normal college life, getting extra jump shots in, taking care of your body and eating right," he said. "It's just something you learn with time."
(Then again, given that senior Nikola Dragovic is facing felony assault charges in connection with an incident at a Hollywood concert in October, it's not just underclassmen who occasionally lose sight of the sacrifices required).
The one spot of hope for the Bruins, in a year they have lost to Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach State and were drilled by Portland, is that the rest of the Pac-10 is nearly as bad: a 5-19 record against BCS conference foes as a league, and nine losses to the Big West, West Coast and Big Sky conferences.
With that body of work, the only way these Bruins get to the NCAA tournament is to win the conference tourney. (Or to have a well-connected ticket broker.)
Under those circumstances, a rebuilding year makes sense. It's seldom pretty, and it's a particularly tough sell in LA -- USC football didn't acknowledge theirs this year, either -- but sometimes it's necessary.
"We need our freshmen, who are just learning to practice hard every day, learning what's expected of them on a daily basis, to grow up in a hurry," Howland said.
But considering what you've already witnessed, Bruins fans, you're better off preparing for a season of teachable moments.
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Bruins miserable as Wooden watches
By MARCIA C. SMITH
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
December 12, 2009 7:45 PM
UCLA suffers miserable defeat while Wooden watches.
ANAHEIM - John Wooden should have been spared from watching this game. He's 99 years old. He doesn't need the stresser.
He's thinning and frail and couldn't prop himself to a stand in front of his Honda Center luxury box perch Saturday afternoon when the spectators gave the legendary UCLA coach an ovation. But Wooden is so gracious and generous of heart that he mustered up the energy to raise his arms, shake his fists and meekly grin beneath his square-framed glasses.
This came with two minutes left in the Bruins' humiliating 72-54 loss to Mississippi State at the Wooden Classic. This was also when Bruins coach Ben Howland probably started to feel sick.
"After the game, I felt really bad because John Wooden is here watching his team play," said Howland, whose team suffered its fifth consecutive loss to drop to 2-6. "It leaves a very bad taste in my mouth to have him watch us play the way we played today."
There's no gentle way to put this, no pinprick we can make through a piece of paper to ease the pain of watching the current Bruins team play: The Bruins, right now, are not good. Talented but awful. Young but losing.
No Bruins team has started this poorly since the 1945-46 season, when Wilbur Jones was coach and the Bruins played in the Pacific Coach Conference. Wooden was decades away from filling Pauley Pavilion with banners, and Howland wasn't even alive.
On Saturday, it was the Bruins who appeared without a heart, without a pulse and without a rhythm. They never led in the game against the Bulldogs (8-2) of the Southeastern Conference. They trailed, 40-19, at halftime, and by 24 points, twice, the first time when MSU guard Ravern Johnson (game-high 29 points) buried a 3-pointer without a Bruins defender in his zip code.
The Bruins were never in this. They got down by double-digits nine minutes into the game because they weren't good on any side of a round ball. They were burned again on transition defense. They couldn't stop the Bulldogs' fastbreaks, the kickouts to Johnson or the inside game strong-armed by 6-foot-9, 230-pound Jarvis Varnado.
Howland called Varnado "the big kid inside (who) was really giving us problems." They got their shots slapped away eight times — seven times Varnado, college basketball's best blocking octopus who also had 13 points and 11 rebounds.
Varnado intimidated the young Bruins enough to keep them from driving inside or taking the shot at the risk of physical rejection. The Bruins played basketball with hands and feet of panic and desperation, which is very uncharacteristic of a Howland program.
And this isn't the typical Howland or UCLA program. It is one that has been massively impacted by the early departures of NBA talent and last year's loss of four starters.
Even MSU coach Rick Stansbury acknowledged that his team has beaten a UCLA program that is in "transition" and will be just "a matter of time before he (Howland) gets that back again."
Howland has to live in the bleak present. He said his team "played poorly," "forgot to execute" and "will need to get better in a hurry."
In every way.
Howland also said that he, now eight games into the season, hasn't set his starting five. He's lucky he can make his mind up about a starting one.
The Bruins' top scorers Saturday were senior Michael Roll (17 points), a first-year starting guard who has unexpectedly been carrying the team every game, and Malcolm Lee (16 points), a sophomore guard who is a raw as cake batter.
The leading Bruins rebounders, each with eight boards, were freshmen: Reeves Nelson, who played with a black eye and a scratched cornea, and Tyler Honeycutt, who had 19 minutes of playing experience coming into the game.
Senior starting small forward Nikola Dragovic, who was the sole returning starter from last season's NCAA Tournament team, did virtually laps on the court for 29 minutes. He had one rebound. He has more police arrests (two) than points (zero) on 0-for-9 shooting, including 0 for 5 from beyond the arc.
"I'm at a loss," said Howland, flummoxed by Dragovic's performance.
Wooden shouldn't have had to see this.
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