UCLA, this ain't John Wooden's team

Basketball
1

UCLA has fallen off the map since Wesbrook and Co. moved on. Alford was canned, his replacement is a defensive guru, former coach of Cinn. Hofstra beat up on UCLA at Polley Pavilion. They still have 4 star talent but they are new to Coach Cronin.
On the Hofstra game


7 Hofstra turnovers all night.
Cronin said the Pride was a difficult foe because they started three senior guards and took care of the basketball. “They shot 30 free throws and they don’t post up all night,” Cronin said, “so just got beat off the dribble, beat off the dribble. We tried changing defenses, our guys got confused at that, so we’re a work in progress as far as being able to change defenses.”

So UCLA is pissed, Cronin is pissed and BYU gets to play them next.

UCLA is driven by UCLA’s version of our Childs, 6’10 Jalen Hill. He is a double double every night.
6’9 Smith is their other scoring machine and is 100% from the FT line.
Prince Ali, 6’4 super fast guard, stealing machine
5’11 guard Campbell is their point and great outside shooter along with Smith.

Hofstra’s humiliation may be the motivation UCLA needed to listen to Cronin and will work against BYU. My gut tells me that they play inspired defense and focus on work inside where they are much longer. BYU is sloooow, easy to stay in front of (unlike Hofstra) BYU may be favored by ESPN by 72%, but others call this a push
I say UCLA 72-68 BYU.

2

BYU 83 - 68

BYU has to win cause my brother and all his family are Bruin fans :slight_smile:

3

UCLA is better than BSU-10 plus win for Bruins

4

I will be surprised if we don’t lose by double digits. BSU is a BAD basketball team, and something like 28 of their first 32 points were in the paint. Anyone who can play above the rim can get to the rack against us, and UCLA has several guys who can drive and finish high. Pope has nothing up front, and he is doing a great job of stressing that we CANNOT repeat CANNOT get into foul trouble, and the tradeoff is lots of uncontested layins. I don’t see any way around that until Childs is back.

5

BSU is an average, not bad team. They have 2 legit players that can score around the rim and did. We had a chance to win that but key players were shooting tight and poorly.

6

Hate to agree with you but it sure why they have us beating them? Maybe because they are up and down.

7

Leon Rice is a smart coach and I’m assuming UCLA’s coach is also. Pound the ball inside-make layups-get cougars in foul trouble. Force BYU to make a high percentage of 3’s. Of course if they do’ then BYU has a shot. After watching Haws lately he should be an assist guy and driving to the basket. It will be interesting what Pope comes up with, but I still like UCLA in this one