Bruins have kept plugging along
Is UCLA really a sleeping college basketball giant, finally re-awakening under the gentle prodding of third-year coach Ben Howland?
Gonzaga’s Mark Few doesn’t think so.
Few insists the perennial Pacific-10 Conference power Bruins have remained a considerable force in the ever-changing world of college basketball all along – albeit nowhere nearly as dominant as they were in the mid-1960s and 70s, when they won nine NCAA tournament titles in 10 years and 10 overall under legendary coach John Wooden.
“Coach (Jim) Harrick had a great run there,” said Few, whose third-seeded Bulldogs (29-3) will face Howland’s second-seed Bruins (29-6) on Thursday in the Oakland (Calif.) Arena for a chance to advance to the Elite Eight of this year’s NCAAs. “And Lavs’ (Steve Lavin) teams seemed to kind of respond or wake up or do something in March.”
It was Harrick who led UCLA to the national title in 1995. And Lavin, despite overseeing a run of regular-season mediocrity during his tenure at Westwood, had an 11-5 record in his five trips to the Big Dance.
“I think the business has changed, and the landscape has changed since those legendary days,” Few said, when asked to compare UCLA’s recent NCAA record to those of Wooden’s dominant teams. “There’s a lot more really, really good teams. And there’s a lot more of them getting into the NCAA tournament now.
“It seems like the expectations on that program have never been quite fair. And I think Ben has done just a marvelous job of dealing with all of that and steering these guys through all of that.
“And now, they’re in a position to recapture that glory.”
UCLA was just 29-28 in its first two seasons under Howland, a former graduate assistant at Gonzaga under Jay Hillock. But after winning the regular-season Pac-10 title with a 14-4 record, the Bruins head into Thursday’s showdown against the Zags having won nine straight games.
“They’ve got some great players and great athletes who are finally buying into Ben’s system,” Few said.
No Zags allowed
Few, when asked if he had attempted to put together a regular-season game against the Bruins since his Bulldogs dismantled them 59-43 at Pauley Pavilion in December of 1999, jumped at the chance to harpoon Howland.
“Absolutely impossible with Ben,” he joked of UCLA’s third-year coach, who has built a bit of a reputation for putting together soft non-league schedules. “One just needs to look at his history of non-league scheduling at Northern Arizona and Pittsburgh.
“Fortunately, for UCLA fans (athletic director) Mr. (Daniel) Guerrero is in charge of their non-league schedule. If Ben ever wrestles that away, look out. You’re gonna see five Alabama AT&Ts and four non-division I’s.
“There’s no greater scheduler than Ben Howland.”
Battling the bug
Gonzaga’s Erroll Knight and Larry Gurganious were both held out of Monday’s practice because of flu-like symptoms that surfaced just prior to Saturday’s second-round game against Indiana.
Knight played against the Hoosiers despite having a 101-degree temperature, but Gurganious never got off the bench.
Still, Few said he was more concerned about someone else on the team coming down with the bug than he was about the availability of Knight and Gurganious for Thursday’s third-round game against UCLA in Oakland.
“We’ve got the flu kind of running through the squad right now,” he explained. “For Erroll, I think he’ll be fine. His kind of peaked right before the game, as far as the fever breaking. Then Larry had it, too, but he’s going to be fine.
“Now it’s kind of who is going to get hit next. Adam (Morrison), it started to infect him a little bit on Saturday. But we’ve got time between now and (Thursday) to, hopefully, get through it all.”
Morrison, the nation’s leading Division I scorer, was at practice Monday and showed no ill effects of the flu.
Three-pointers
Gonzaga set two NCAA tournament game school records – fewest turnovers (7) and most points scored (90) – in Saturday’s 90-80 second-round win over Indiana. … The Zags’ Adam Morrison also set a GU tournament record when he scored 35 points in an opening-round win over Xavier, surpassing the 31 Richie Frahm hung on Louisville in 2000. … Gonzaga will take a 20-game winning streak, the nation’s longest, into Thursday’s game against UCLA, which has won nine in a row. … The 15-point, 10-rebound double-double the Zags’ Sean Mallon posted against the Hoosiers on Saturday was the fourth of his career.