April 5, 2008
The Yankees, Mets, and — most devastating — UCLA all lost today. The first two we are dealing with o.k.; there are 150+ baseball games left.
But UCLA’s season is O-V-E-R.
Leslie is not happy.
Adding insult to injury, UCLA did not even put on a good showing. They did not play like a championship team at all, and the results showed it. Porous defense, soft rebounding, and, most inexplicable of all, uncoordinated offense. It was reminiscent of a regular season game Didion and I watched. UCLA is supposed to be very well coached, but that did not show in this game: no ball movement and few passes into the post to take advantage of UCLA’s big advantage — Kevin Love, who, we suspect is going to announce his entry into the NBA draft, effectively giving UCLA the finger and seriously handicapping next season’s squad. Suffice it to say, the (game) loss has cast a pall; Love jumping ship is only going to thicken it.
I am off to hang some black bunting.
April 6, 2008 at 12:35 am
UCLA was lucky to be there after their KU escape. They caught other breaks by Uconn and Duke being knocked out early in the West as well.
April 6, 2008 at 12:36 am
I mean their A&M escape.
April 6, 2008 at 10:29 am
welcome, ben! and believe me, i am by no means a fan of ucla whose reason is blinded by devotion. every single game we saw during the season (sadly, few, being on the east coast) had an instance where bad officiating gave ucla a break. my family (still in california) would send me clippings of game summaries, and the discussion was always that ucla needed to get their proverbial %$&# together because winning on officials’ calls is, frankly, not really winning. yes, in the long run, teams benefit as much as suffer from bad calls, but ucla should be better than that. did they squeak by against a&m? certainly. but the next two games, ucla looked strong and unified; last night, not at all. my relationship with ucla goes back to 1990 … two (great) degrees and a period of soul-destroying employment. for a few years i lamented the state of basketball (in spite of the 1995 title) and hoped for redemption at the hands of the football team. for many more years, i cried about the state of both. recently, i have been emboldened by the b-ball program, but now i have to put all of my faith in neuheisel. granted, going to the final four three years in a row after the lavin drought is great. losing so pathetically last night (and, arguably, last year to florida) takes a lot of shine off the achievement of a deep tourney run.