UCLA's Michael Roll celebrates making the winning basket in the final 2 seconds during overtime in the Bruins' victory at California earlier this month. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
UCLA senior guard Roll no longer just role player
By Jon Gold Staff Writer
The Los Angeles Daily News
Updated: 01/15/2010 10:46:46 PM PST
UCLA BASKETBALL: Senior guard emerges as Howland's most consistent threat.
Wait, stop, rewind.
Something isn't right.
Is that Michael Roll making a winning shot over one of UCLA's purest rivals? A leaning jumper at the free-throw line against Cal on Jan. 6 with 1.8seconds left, a 76-75 win?
This is not supposed to happen.
Guys like Michael Roll don't hit that shot. They don't even take that shot.
Just look - it's in his name - Roll.
Role.
As in role player.
For the UCLA men's basketball program, where the water tastes like the richest wine and the bread like the sweetest cake, where they play on a court of gold on hallowed ground, role players are not supposed to hit winning shots.
News flash: Michael Roll is not a role player.
Bigger news flash: Michael Roll has been UCLA's best player this season.
"He has been our most consistent player from each game to game," UCLA head coach Ben Howland said of his fifth-year senior guard/forward. "It's one of the great things about coaching, to watch kids develop both as players and as human beings, and Mike has obviously matured a lot in these five years."
Talk to 22-year-old Roll about the 18-year-old Roll and he laughs.
He came to UCLA a precocious freshman from Aliso Niguel High. He averaged nearly 25 points per game for those Wolverines and originally committed to UC Santa Barbara to be a big fish in a small pond, as he calls it, despite being rated the No. 1 shooting guard in the West.
He cautiously was optimistic about his playing time back then, when he knew he was stuck behind Aaron Afflalo and Cedric Bozeman on a 32-7 team that lost in the national championship game to Florida.
But despite All-Pacific 10 Conference players blocking his way, he averaged almost 15 minutes on the team and Howland called him "an important contributor."
"Coming in you're the low man on the totem pole; other guys who are here know what to expect," said Roll, whose Bruins take a 7-9 record into today's 4:30 p.m. game with USC at Pauley Pavilion.
"I knew I wouldn't come in and be the man. We had NBA players on the team already. Luckily, I got a chance right away, and I took the experiences with me."
He took other things with him, too.
He took the patience he developed while one year as an "important contributor" became two, as in his second year, when Roll was buried behind Afflalo and Josh Shipp and the team went back to the Final Four. Two years became three, though, and that's when Roll really grew up.
He watched as a high-rising sophomore named Russell Westbrook leapfrogged him into the starting lineup. Roll's minutes per game actually dipped from 16.3 minutes as a sophomore to 15.5 as a junior before he was lost for the season after rupturing his left plantar fascia.
"It's tough to deal with," Roll said. "Obviously coming out of high school you're the man, everything revolves around you. Then coming in here, and just doing whatever I can to get as many minutes as possible, I know if I were to have gone to a small school I would have had a good shot. The pros kind of outweighed the cons, though. Do less on the court immediately, then get a chance later in the career as I'm more mature."
In his rebooted junior year, he thought it finally would be his turn. It was not. With Darren Collison forcing Jrue Holiday to shooting guard and Shipp still in the mix, Roll again was just a contributor, a 17-minute man, a kid with a sweet shot and average athleticism.
Roll said personally he felt he deserved more playing time, but he trusts coach Howland and "believes in what coach believes in."
He didn't fight or complain. He worked.
As the season concluded and Holiday announced he would flee to the NBA, Roll finally became what he thought he was destined to become so long ago.
"I knew it would come," said Roll, who at leads the struggling Bruins with 34.7 minutes per game. "I knew it wouldn't be early, but I was just trying to improve a little bit every day, every year. Pick up on the little things from my past teammates. It's come with time."
And now, as Bozeman and Afflalo and Shipp did for him, Roll now does for Malcolm Lee and Tyler Honeycutt and Reeves Nelson.
Roll is the stalwart, the old man, one of just three seniors on a youth revolution as UCLA has eight scholarship underclassmen.
"It's kind of funny. My first couple years, some things would stick in my mind that some of the older players did," said Roll, shaking his head and smiling as he reminisced on his time with the Bruins even at just 22. "This year at key moments, I'll do something and I'll look back and see the freshmen are looking at me like I looked at Cedric Bozeman."
Someday, they will pass it on as well, the UCLA basketball circle of life on a never-ending cycle.
They will tell the recruits of 2013 about that miracle against Cal, when Roll just pumped his fist and walked away, not overjoyed, not whooping and hollering, not even surprised.
They'll tell these precocious freshmen about the kid who waited his turn, who took as much as he could when it was there and did what he could with it.
They'll them about Michael Roll.
"For all the outsiders, UCLA basketball is a great thing," Roll said. "People look at it as more than just a college basketball team. It's special. Being a part of it my first couple years was great. But now I'm more of a leader on the team, and I want as much as I can. Not just for my sake, but for UCLA basketball.
"This is the best fraternity in the country. It's special to all of us."
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