Bruin Basketball Woes Point to Poor Conditioning

We all know UCLA hasn’t been great at free throws… well, for a while now. (This is my fourth year here as an undergrad, and this subject is repeatedly talked about.)

You might be surprised, however, that Ben Howland knows this and forces his players to constantly shoot free throws- often at least 100 a practice. Even more surprising is that our team makes those free throws consistently, often hitting at least 90% of them.

The only thing that changes is that after playing the game for a while, is that players tend to be tired, and running around the court tends to make steady hands harder to achieve. The other viable explanation is that the nerves of playing the game is affecting free throw shooting. This could be plausible, but it’s unlikely that UCLA basketball is nervous throughout the game, every game.

It’s also well known that the UCLA defense has been- mediocre at best. Ben Howland’s signature man-on-man defense is great when the players can handle it- man-on-man is much more taxing on your body though, forcing the Bruins to switch more of a zone defense.

Here are some key stats-

Bruins rank 9th in free throw shooting in the Pac-12 (itself in a down year) with .659

They also rank 9th in field goal percentage on defense with .428

Finally, and perhaps most telling, they rank second to last defending the 3 pointer with .358

Three pointers are where conditioning is extremely important- the further you are from the basket, the more room there is to move around. In the paint, going from one point to another is a shorter distance than from the outside. Also, when defenders kick it to the outside for the wide open 3, the speed at which defenders need to move to cover the ball is of utmost importance.

Combine this with the fact that UCLA has blown plenty of leads late in the 2nd period, I’m inclined to believe that the players are simply just tired. This is college basketball, and the players are definitely fighting tooth and nail to pad their stats, so it’s improbable that the players simply become lazy.

This is where some of that Pac-12 new tv deal money needs to come in. The players need to get more support when it comes to strength and conditioning, and while Ben Howland’s team hasn’t been performing up to task lately, he needs all the support he can get.

As the players become more conditioned from the rigors of the season, we’re starting to see the Bruins get better and better however. Our last win against Stanford is proof that UCLA is capable of a dominating win (though that free throw shooting needs to get up to at least the mid 70’s).

GO BRUINS!