USC leaves UCLA looking for Unfindable Answers

As a Bruin, I am absolutely disgusted with UCLA’s performance in Pauley Pavilion last night. UCLA was destroyed and I mean destroyed by USC, by the score of 67-46, their biggest victory ever at Pauley Pavilion. You can check out the box score here. UCLA, who never led in the blowout, were out-rebounded 37-22, and out-shot (50.2% to 33.3%). The player of the game: Dwight Lewis. I predicted that this could happen yesterday:

Dwight Lewis is principally known as a “Bruin Slayer” as his past few outings against UCLA have been big, most likely the deciding factor for beating UCLA.

Lewis had a career high (24 Points) and five three pointers against the typical Howland defense; stingy, tough, relentl-… sorry, I couldn’t kid myself anymore. UCLA has one of the worst defenses in the nation (ranking 125th in the Pomeroy rankings), and seems helpless in both zone and in man.

Down low, Nikola Vucevic had a game changing 19 points, and helped shut down Reeves Nelson defensively.

There really isn’t any point in analyzing this game. It’s not worth it. The bigger question was brought up over at Bruins Nation, where they are currently question the integrity of Ben Howland, the coach who brought UCLA back from the abyss to three straight Final Fours, a National Championship game appearance, and a handful of NBA premier players to a program with little integrity.

My thoughts after the break:

Questioning Ben Howland is like questioning Pete Carroll after USC went 9-4 last year. There are numerous arguments that were brought forth in favor of getting rid of Howland because he is either stubborn, or doesn’t run the offense that John Calipari does, or he is a bad recruiter.

Going right down to the Win or Loss column, it would seem that UCLA is headed directly to a losing season, and a pretty embarrassing one at that. That, obviously, will never, ever be acceptable at UCLA. However, attacking a coach that has done unbelievable things with a program in ruins, and kept it going for three years, and brought a new identity back to a type of hard-nosed, grind it out, basketball team.

Until this year, UCLA has played hard, fluid, tenacious basketball. Until this year, everyone was on the Howland bandwagon. Until this year, UCLA has competed on a consistently high level. I honestly can’t bring myself to put Howland on the hot seat; it’s unacceptable, but you gotta have faith!

We’ll see how much UCLA loses by when they face the Washington schools next week.

On the USC side of things, it would seem as if USC has something to really build on now, with their first road win coming in good fashion, it would seem as if this coaching staff has themselves a good head start at catching up to UCLA and play with them consistently and not just every other year.