Scoop Dreams: UCLA men’s basketball team in need of a stable leader

Junior guard Lazeric Jones looks to provide the Bruins with leadership as they head into the second half of Pac-10 play. Jones was named a captain this season.

Scoop Dreams: UCLA men’s basketball team in need of a stable leader

By ELI SMUKLER
The Daily Bruin in Men's Basketball, Sports
Published February 1, 2011 Updated: 12:15 AM



Do you ever find yourself saying, “I’m getting too old for this?”

If not, you haven’t been watching the UCLA men’s basketball team.

It’s enough to gray your hairs and make you vote Republican.

On Saturday, UCLA somehow turned a 15-point lead over Arizona State (1-7 in the Pac-10) into a one-point, brow-wiping, overtime victory.

And this ain’t a first-time offense.

Against Oregon State, UCLA wrecked a 17-point second-half advantage before scraping by in the game’s final minutes. With California visiting a week earlier, the Bruins couldn’t even hold onto a nine-point lead with 2:29 remaining, yet they won that one too.

Watching this team, I feel like a parent who has given the keys to the Toyota to my freshly licensed 16-year-old, except the Toyota is my sanity. Coach Ben Howland might agree.

“I was just so relieved we won the game,” he admitted on Monday.

So, what’s the deal here? Is it really that this team is just too young to play consistently?

The Bruins don’t have a senior on the squad this year, which is often suggested as an explanation for why they can hold a lead about as well as they can hold a puddle.

That sounds like ageist rhetoric if I ever heard it. In the end, the cohesion of any sports team is as much about personality as it is tenure.

Heck, I’m a senior. Take my word for it.
But this team does need a leader.

You know who I miss most right now? Michael Roll. By the end of his five years in the program, the now-graduated shooting guard could be a stone-faced assassin when he got hot.

He had a steady hand and a steady voice this team could really use, especially when it gets down to crunch time and things start to unravel as it has recently.

Instead, this Bruin team is emotional, which can be both good and bad.

When sophomore forward Reeves Nelson gets fired up, you might as well clear the lane because nothing is stopping him from getting to the rim. That’s why he leads the team in scoring and rebounding. That’s why he is a crowd favorite. That’s why he’s necessary.

But when he gets down, boy, it’s like the whole world has turned blue and the price of smiles just went through the roof.

UCLA needs a guy that the players can glance at between plays to assess how they should be feeling, a mood ring if you will.

Sophomore forward Tyler Honeycutt could be that guy. Off the court and in the huddle, he has enough poise and bravado to command the attention of his teammates. Plus, he very well could be the Bruins’ best player.

If Honeycutt – who, in all fairness, was battling the flu during the team’s last game – steps up to that role despite being just a second-year college player, then the Bruins are one step closer to being a top-tier team.

Then there’s Lazeric Jones.

From a faraway place called Chicago, juco transfer Jones was named captain of this team the very same year he joined it. Just the situation itself was a lot of pressure to put on a guy.

He may not be the best guard in the league, but Jones has handled that burden well.

Maybe all the Bruins’ mystery boils down to Zeek. When he’s on his game, so are they, but when’s he’s not, the team has faltered. The stats seem to say so.

Since Pac-10 play started, Jones is averaging 15.7 points in each of the Bruins’ six wins. In their three losses, he has five points total.

In interviews with the media, Jones is articulate and introspective. After the all-too-close win in Tempe, Ariz., Jones talked about how his team kept composure going into the extra period.

“Out of regulation we just said that it was a new game,” Jones said. “We let everything that happened go and played hard.”

Before overtime started, UCLA had gone four-for-28 from beyond the arc in the previous 80 minutes of basketball it had played, a dismal 0.143 percentage.

Jones shook it off though, and hit a 3-pointer on the first possession of the overtime. His team followed his lead and knocked down two more.

After a zero-for-seven shooting night in Tucson two nights previous, Jones was determined to improve not just his game, but his image.

“I feel like I kind of let my team down during the Arizona game,” he said. “Right now I’m just on the path to try to regain their respect and step up and be the leader that my coaches want me to be.”

It’s that kind of attitude, at any age, that wins games.


With reports from Sam Strong, Bruin Sports senior staff.

Smukler co-hosts Overtime with Daily Bruin Sports, which airs every Monday at 6:30 p.m. on uclaradio.com. E-mail Smukler at esmukler@media.ucla.edu.