Boykin had a terrible time switching on defense. He seemed to always make the wrong switch or not switch at all which led to numerous uncontested layups and/or wide open 3 pointers.

Also, Sanders-Frison is very slow on both ends of the court.

Finally, and you touched on this, this team is really thin and missed Gutierez terribly.

UCLA played like they had to win, Cal played like they had already won.

And there it is.

Both me and my wife (Cal ’88) had the same feeling watching this game. Cal looked as if it was completely devoid of emotion from the very beginning, and was merely playing because it was a formality to make the win (which they already seemed to believe they had) official. There was no intensity, desire, or fire in the play. The crowd seemed the same way. On TV it was as if only four people were making any noise at all. The students looked as lackluster and bored as the team.

When we went up by a dozen early in the 2nd it was the end. Our guys suddenly went from bored to asleep. They were slow, sloppy, and completely disinterested. You could just see it in their play.

I’ve heard a few people talk about how this was just bad luck, where Ucla had an out-of-body shooting 2nd half, while Cal just got the other end of the mojo, but that doesn’t float. In sports you tend to make your own luck. All those long range shots that wouldn’t fall for Cal weren’t because of fate — it was because the players (Randle, Christopher, etc) just didn’t have that focus and high-level of intensity needed to create their luck. And the opposite went for the Bruins, who continued to work hard and who must have seen the utter lack of energy from Cal.

I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll do so again: this game absolutely was a disgrace. It was the first time in many years I actually walked away before the finish in complete disgust. And I wonder if this is the only Ben Braun moment Monty is going to have.

The worst part about this is there is now no doubt that Ucla simply owns us in Berkeley. We are their bitch.

I’m now looking forward to another .500 conference season. Maybe one or two surprise wins against better teams, but just getting dry-entry ass raped by Washington, Oregon, Zona, and the LA teams again.

we’ve won every single game we were “supposed to” before this one. except maybe syracuse, but that’s only because nobody realized how good they were yet.

I don’t watch much basketball anymore, and games like this are why. Not because Cal lost, to UCLA, which is never good, but because it is yet another illustration of how the three-point line has ruined the sport. At least for me.

Team A absolutely shredded Team B for much of the game, forcing gobs of turnovers on one end and dismantling a sieve-like zone defense on the other. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a team score as many easy buckets in the paint from their half-court offense as Team A did last night. Yet, because Team B goes on a 10-minute spurt where they can’t miss from outside, and because those shots count, ARBITRARILY, for 50% more points than the shots Team A had been making the entire game, Team B is able to climb back into a contest it had no business being in.

This rule, admittedly well established and not going away anytime soon, has made a mockery of what was once a beautiful sport to watch. Does a touchdown count for more if it’s scored from one’s own side of the 50-yard line? Does a home run count for more if it flies 450 feet into center field rather than 350 feet down the right-field line? Does a goal count double if its struck from outside, say, 35 meters, or scored on a bicycle kick? Of course not. Those would all be ludicrous changes to sports we love.

Has the 3-point shot “opened up” the game so that the scoring stars of today are guards and small forwards in the mold of Michael or Kobe, rather than the big men of yesterday like Wilt and Kareem? Sure. And as a short guy myself who was a frustrated point guard growing up, I can appreciate that. But it still kills me everytime I see a team win solely because it has a hotter collective outside shooting hand than the opponent. Could Cal have played better perimeter defense? Yes. Did UCLA patch up its zone down the stretch and bring the Cal offense to a halt? Yes. Nonetheless, it’s a travesty that UCLA won that game last night; the Bears were dominant in every category except scoring beyond the arc. (Ironic, I know, for a Cal team that led the nation in 3-point shooting last year.)

When Cal and UCLA play, we like to pay lip service to the legends of Wooden and Newell. But the reality is, what passes for “basketball” today bears little resemblance to the game that John and Pete knew so well.

I’ll stop my rant here, before it morphs into a critique of MMA and the sad decline of boxing.

Bitterly yours,
Old Man Pete

P.S. Stay off my lawn, you young ruffians!

hose shots count, ARBITRARILY, for 50% more points than the shots

Yeah, okay, I kind of see your point. And, as one old guy to another, I’ve engaged in shaking my fist at the sky in frustration as well.

But there are two things about your rant (great though it was) that just don’t seem to ring true.

1. I don’t think it was completely arbitrary to set the distance or make the baskets worth more. I’d like to believe that some stat geek was called in and reviewed what the distance was where players had significantly less success shooting, and placed the line behind that.

2. Both teams are allowed to shoot from that distance, so it’s not like Ucla had special consideration or anything. It’s just that we kind of sucked.

Bitter on, Old Blue!