With USC Football Over, Start Being Disappointed in UCLA Basketball

Even with the bowl win, USC football wasn’t its old self this season: 9-4 overall in the regular season, and a starkly mediocre 5-4 record in the Pac-10. After seven straight BCS bowls and top-4 finishes, even a season that most call “good” is a huge, huge disappointment for the Trojans.

And now, with that all done, the greater LA area can start being disappointed in UCLA basketball.

The Bruins in recent years haven’t put together quite the hardwood dynasty that the Trojans have on the field, but their resumé has still been astonishing. The national championship game in 2006. Two more Final Fours in ’07 and ’08. Nothing lower than third in the Pac-10 since 2004. The recent alumni form a who’s-who of young talent in the NBA: Jordan Farmar, Arron Afflalo, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Love, Darren Collison, Jrue Holiday.

And now? The Bruins are 6-8 so far this season. Conference play has only barely started, but they’ve come out 1-1.

Their best basketball has been lately, but it hasn’t been great. Before a loss to Arizona they’d won three straight, including wins over 9-5 Colorado State and 10-5 Arizona State. Those quality wins have overwhelmingly been the exception, however; the combined opponents’ record in their wins has been 37-46, and 19-36 with CSU and ASU excepted.

Realtimerpi.com ranks them at #226 in the nation, right behind Coppin State and right in front of Nicholls State.

Disappointed yet?

They’ve also this year experienced their worst defeat in the celebration-rich Ben Howland era. It was a 74-47 setback (a 27-point loss) and it came at the hands of University of Portland. They’re the Pilots, and their uniforms are purple—you may have never heard of them before.

This 2009-2010 UCLA squad, however, is one of the few teams that can ever claim to be in a “rebuilding” year. The only holdovers from the recent glory years are three seniors (Michael Roll, Nikola Dragovic, and James Keefe), and two juniors (Spencer Soo and Mustafa Abdul-Hamid). The rest of the roster is freshmen and sophomores—six of each—and while young, it’s a talented group of players.

Starter Jerime Anderson was Scout.com’s #3 high school point guard nationally in 2008. Malcolm Lee was the #7 shooting guard that same year, and was a McDonald’s All-American alongside Jrue Holiday. Drew Gordon, who just transferred out of the program, was the #15 power forward. And four years ago, even senior Mike Roll was the #1 shooting guard on the west coast coming out of high school.

The trick for Howland, then, will be to keep some of this talent in LA long enough to lend some experience and leadership. The lack of upperclassmen leaders on his current squad isn’t due to a lapse in recruiting; that often happens in a coaching change, but Howland has been in place since 2003. Instead, it’s that his players keep leaving—had they stayed, his team would be led this year by a senior Westbrook, a junior Love, and even a sophomore Holiday.

Instead, it’s a young, inexperienced team. And it’s going to stay that way unless the heart of the team starts staying in school.

It appears at first to be a commentary against the NBA’s one-and-done rule, but ends up drawing mixed conclusions. Minus the rule, UCLA wouldn’t benefit at all from some of the student talent as they’d jump straight to the Association. But would the Bruins rather forget about those players and focus on building blocks—four-year players that may lack superstar skills, but who will stay with the program and build a solid team based on chemistry and longevity?

As of now, the potential from one-year superstar players is simply too much to ignore. While it sounds like a terrific story to draft the four-year types and build a solid program that way, it ignores the fact that Carmelo Anthony single-handedly won an NCAA title for Syracuse as a freshman. And that Derrick Rose, in his one year, took his Memphis Tigers within seconds of a title. And UCLA even saw its own Kevin Love put the team on his back and take them to the Final Four, before bolting to the NBA after one season.

UCLA, in short, has entered the sweepstakes. It’s become true in college basketball that you can’t get the big payoffs without taking the big risks. Gambling on early-departure players can mean the very high (Final Fours, title games, championships) but almost certainly also means the very low (abysmal seasons when those players have left).

In another year or two, if the talent sticks around, the UCLA Bruins can once again be a national contender when March rolls around. If Lee, Anderson, and Nelson decide the NBA is a better fit for them, however, then it might be a while before UCLA is mighty again.

Call it an extended period of rebuilding.