Focus on defense drives UCLA's uptempo offense

Southeast Region
#7 UCLA Bruins (22-10) vs #10 Michigan State Spartans (19-14)
Thursday, March 17
6:20 pm PDT
TV: TBS

Focus on defense drives UCLA's uptempo offense

By Greg Auman, Times Staff Writer
tampabay.com, St. Petersburg Times
Posted: Mar 16, 2011 06:15 PM


TAMPA — Ben Howland teams are perhaps best known for their focus on defense, but UCLA's players say they shouldn't be seen as a team that can't push the ball at a higher tempo when they want.

"Everyone has a stereotype of us as a defensive team, but we can get up and down the court, too," said Reeves Nelson, a 6-foot-8 forward who averages 13.9 points for the Bruins. "We want to focus on defense, because when we get stops and we rebound the basketball, that drives our uptempo offense. One thing leads to the other."

Seventh-seeded UCLA (22-10) comes in averaging 70 points, 11/2 points ahead of its opponent, 10th-seeded Michigan State (19-14). But the Bruins have failed to reach 60 points in their past two games — 59 in a Pac-10 tournament loss to Oregon, 58 in an overtime win against Washington State. Tougher opponents have challenged UCLA with a fast pace: Villanova beat the Bruins 82-70, and Kansas edged them 77-76.

"We're going to try and run and they're going to try and run," Spartans coach Tom Izzo said, "so hopefully it'll be more up and down and not quite 3 yards and a cloud of dust that people would expect from a Big Ten team and a Ben Howland-coached team."

Howland doesn't have a senior on his roster and had the rare feat of placing three players — Nelson, forward Tyler Honeycutt and guard Malcolm Lee — on the five-man All-Pac-10 first team after this season.