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Fraternizing with the Enemy: Notes on the UCLA Bruins

Justin M Guerriero

Club Member
Club Member
The Colorado Buffaloes host the No. 4 UCLA Bruins on Thursday evening. The Bruins (16-1) average 90+ points per game and have a deadly arsenal of players. I touched base with my amiga TuAnh Dam, the sports editor over at UCLA's Daily Bruin to gather some intel on this team. Here's what she had to say.

Justin Guerriero: Looking over the Bruins' stat sheet and good god...how has this team been able to manage a .534 conversion rate from the floor? It almost seems like this team just doesn't miss a lot of shots. Are these guys simply that good?

TuAnh Dam: They're good talent-wise. But their shooting percentage isn't .534 just because they're good.
Most of it is because they're taking good shots that they want to be taking. Their ball movement lets the shooters like Bryce Alford, Aaron Holiday and Isaac Hamilton stretch the floor and open it up for TJ Leaf and Thomas Welsh.

JG: How does this starting five hurt enemy teams? You have six Bruins who average points in the double digits per contest...do these guys move the ball around well, is it discipline, coaching? What's their secret?

TD: No secret – the catalyst of their success starts with their the point guard. Lonzo Ball is one of the best players in the country and he has complete control of the offense. The Bruins are essentially playing a style of basketball similar to the Warriors and Spurs. That means fast paced playing and lots of ball movement that all leads to an off balance defense and lots of wide open looks at the basket. Lonzo facilitates this with how he sees the court, but the rest of the team are making those shots which feeds into their game plan.

JG: Colorado has established a routine so far this year in which the team plays in a very lackluster manner early in the contest before waking up and playing better late. In general, how can UCLA take advantage of this Buffaloes team that's struggled to play 40 minutes of sound basketball every game?

TD: To be honest, UCLA has struggled with that too. For most of the season, they've been more of a second half team. In three of their conference games so far they've been the opposite, putting up double digit leads in the first half, but then letting teams like Cal and Stanford creep back later in the game. If Colorado struggles though and UCLA is firing on all cylinders, the Bruins could open up a big enough lead that puts the game out of reach really early and puts less pressure on their defense.

JG: It seems hard to pinpoint weaknesses of a 16-1 squad, but is there anything that the Bruins have struggled with this season?

TD: There's actually a lot this team can and has been working on. For how good they are offensively, they can be inconsistent on the defensive end and could use some work on rebounding. When they're focused on defense, they're actually really good. But they haven't always stayed focus and sometimes get lax when they're ahead by 15-20 points.TJ Leaf is almost averaging a double-double per game, but Thomas Welsh is still trying to get his feet back under him after a knee injury knocked him out for a couple of weeks. They've tried focusing on offensive rebounding this week in practice, so we'll see how they perform this weekend.

JG: Score predictions for this one? Do you take the over or under line on the Bruins scoring their season average of 92.8 points per game?

JG: 98-75 UCLA. I'll take the over on the 92.8 – most of the season they've been in the upper 90s, but haven't been there with Isaac Hamilton going pretty cold over the last couple of games. He should be breaking out of his slump soon and could have a big game this weekend.

Contact CU Independent Head Sports Editor Justin Guerriero at justin.guerriero@colorado.edu and follow him on Twitter.

 
I know UCLA has done well this year, but I've always been intrigued by UCLA's inability to get back to the top tier of men's bball on a consistent basis. Sure, they had the O'Bannons, Afflalo/Westbrook years, but those peaks seem sort of like aberrations to me. UCLA used to dominate and they haven't found that head coach to stay and keep UCLA near the top 10. I'm not sure Alford is it, and I'd be interested to see what UCLA fans feel about him. Arizona eventually found Miller, Kentucky eventually got Tubby and Cal, UNC eventually got Roy...UCLA - when will they find their guy? I guess this is similar in a way to Indiana, where I'm not sure Crean is the guy in spite of some success. Who knows, maybe UCLA follows this year with several more great ones and Alford proves me wrong. I will say I'm not a UCLA fan at all, but I can respect the great history. From a national recognition perspective, I wouldn't mind UCLA becoming great again to help the PAC12.
 
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