ED CRISOSTOMO, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
LOS ANGELES – Four of UCLA’s top five rebounders were gone. Three of them were 6-foot-9 or taller and one was almost physically intuitive on the boards, leaving second-year Coach Steve Alford with legitimate concerns about whether this year’s team would ever be able to replace that production.
“I’ve always had really good rebounding teams,” Alford said. “But we had a lot of concerns coming in, losing a guy like Kyle Anderson and the Wear twins. Now, Tony (Parker) is in a new role – what’s he going to be? Then, you’ve got a few freshmen … we didn’t know what to expect.”
A month into UCLA’s uncertain season, and that’s about the only concern that’s been mostly quelled through 10 games. On an inexperienced team still searching for an identity, rebounding has been a constant.
But heading into a brutal week bookended by Saturday’s matchup with No. 9 Gonzaga (8-1) and next weekend’s game against top-ranked Kentucky (10-0), UCLA (8-2), which hasn’t played a lineup its own size yet, may not have easy pickings around the basket any longer.
Four of UCLA’s next five opponents, in fact, are among the 25 tallest teams in the nation. None, however, are bigger than Kentucky, which, with four significant contributors at 6-foot-10 or taller, plays a bigger frontcourt than any team in college basketball … and the NBA (with the exception of the Portland Trailblazers). Not to mention that the Wildcats are getting offensive rebounds at a 46.3 percent rate – better than any college basketball team in the past decade.
Kentucky may be historic in that sense, but Gonzaga is no slouch in that category. The Bulldogs rank 11th in the nation in offensive rebound rate and have a glass-eating, 7-foot-1, 288-pound center, Przemek Karnowski, who most teams are unable to answer.
Unlike most teams, though, UCLA has its own freakishly athletic weapon to unleash on the boards in freshman Kevon Looney, who in just 10 games already has seven double-doubles – more than Kevin Love racked up in that span during his only season in Westwood. Looney’s work on the offensive boards has been especially masterful, with Utah’s Jakob Poeltl the only Pac-12 player rebounding at a higher rate.
“It’s really hard to box Kevon out,” said Parker, a junior center who has been the team’s best defensive rebounder. “He comes from the top a lot, and a lot of (power forwards) don’t even see him as he’s coming in. It’s really hard to keep us off the glass.”
And unlike past years, UCLA – and its opponents – knows it. In recent games, that’s meant a special focus to keep the Bruins off the offensive glass.
“We didn’t really have guys before that went at the glass like that,” Parker said. “It’s a different approach for teams to play against us when we go at the glass so hard. A lot of guys have sent four or five players to crash the boards, when last year, they’d leak out.”
Parker and Looney – and to a lesser extent, freshman Thomas Welsh – are the backbone of that rebounding effort and much more vital to it than UCLA’s big men were last season, when the work on the boards was more evenly split between the front and backcourt. This season, no UCLA guard has an offensive rebound rate better than 3.6 percent. On defense, only Norman Powell has a rebound rate better than 7.3 percent among UCLA’s guards.
To make up the difference, the pair of bigs have made their rebounding a game within the game this season, each trying to outdo the other on a nightly basis. Parker finally got the best of his freshman counterpart last Wednesday, when he had 17 rebounds, but Looney’s seven double-doubles haven’t exactly made it a fair fight.
“It doesn’t matter who it is,” Parker said. “We have to outrebound them. It’s what Kevon and I say all the time.”
They’ll have to do that and then some, if they hope to stand tall after this next week, which – on the glass and off – is sure to be the Bruins’ toughest two-game stretch this season.
Contact the writer: rkartje@ocregister.com
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