UCLA: Ex-North star Lee to be a scorer

UCLA: Ex-North star Lee to be a scorer

By GREGG PATTON
The Press-Enterprise
12:09 AM PDT on Thursday, October 14, 2010


LOS ANGELES - Malcolm Lee didn't come to Westwood to make the wrong kind of history.

"UCLA is known for championships," the junior guard from Riverside North said. "Not losing."

Which is why the prevailing talk around the Bruins basketball program one month before the season opener is that last season was an aberration.

The untimely collision of strong players leaving, too much inexperience on the court and some recruiting miscalculations.

The rare losing season.

That's what they say, anyway. A once-in-a-decade stumble, to be followed by a return to Pacific-10 Conference prominence and national noise.

"We were young last year," Lee said Wednesday. "We're still young, but now we have some experience."

It's still a big leap to even approach the Final Four successes of the Jordan Farmar-Arron Afflalo-Kevin Love years. The team has no seniors -- in fact, no prime-time player with much more than a season's experience.

With Lee and sophomore forwards Tyler Honeycutt and Nelson Reeves the most prominent of the returning players, UCLA needs hyper-improvement from that trio, as well as significant help from the newcomers, including prized, super-sized freshman center Joshua Smith, listed at 6-foot-10, 305 pounds.

The stepping up part, though, may have to start with Lee, who shuttled back and forth from point guard to shooting guard last year, displaying flashes of scoring brilliance, but mastering neither position.

This year he is the shooting guard, period, and they do mean shooting.

"He'll think more about scoring more than he did last year," Coach Ben Howland said. "We need Malcolm to be a primary scorer."

That suits the 6-4, 195-pound guard just fine.

"My job is to score and have that mentality," said Lee, who was at his best last year as a slasher, whose jumper was as consistent as the 14-18 Bruins. "I've been working on my shot. A lot."

If last year were a major letdown, at least it seems to have served a purpose.

"Everybody's counting us out because of what happened last year, but we're going to prove them wrong," Nelson said. "Everybody's working harder. We're more of a tight-knit group. We know how hard we have to play."

Said Lee: "We're playing with a chip on our shoulder because of last season. It's a redemption mind-set."

Howland was more wait-and-see. Asked what reasonable expectations people should have for this team, Howland went to the book of cautionary quotes.

"We'll compete every day," he said. "I don't want to jinx us, but we have no control over injuries. We've only got 10 scholarship players."

If that sounded as if Howland would be stunned if his bunch competes for a Pac-10 title, don't read too much into it. The conference isn't overloaded with elite teams, and the Bruins could easily be a top-half player.

But anything less, and let the grumbling begin. The Bruins faithful will cut Howland some slack for an off year, since he returned UCLA to upper-tier status. But the penthouse also is supposed to be the Bruins' birthright, and a second year of slippage won't be met with as much understanding.

This is still John Wooden's program, expected to excel. Wooden would have been 100 years old today, and it's not lost on Howland or his players what the UCLA legend watched in Pauley Pavilion last winter.

"Like Coach told us, it was sad that Coach Wooden had to leave this earth on the season we had," Lee said. "Everybody wants to turn it around."

"Wants," of course, will never be good enough.