UCLA Basketball: Midseason Recap Of The Bruins’ Season

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

Well folks, we’re a tad over half way through the Bruins’ 2012-2013 basketball season, so it’s time to recap and assess performance.

Here are the facts:

• The Bruins are 14-3 overall, 4-0 and alone atop the Pac-12 by a half game, and #34 in the DailyRPI. The Bruins are on a 9 game winning streak. The Pac-12 as a conference is rated #5 with three teams in the Top 25.
• The Bruins started the season ranked #13, dropped out of the polls a couple of weeks into the season, remained out of the rankings for seven weeks and re-entered them this week at #24.
• Two players, Josh Smith and Tyler Lamb, left the team in late November. UCLA was 4-2 at the time of their departure and is 10-1 since.
• According to DailyRPI the Bruins have one bad loss to Cal-Poly, three “$” quality wins (Indiana State, California and Stanford), and two “$$” quality wins (Missouri and Colorado).
• The Bruins are currently averaging 17.3 assists pg (9th overall), 78.5 ppg (22nd overall), and 38.7 rebounds pg (44th overall). UCLA is giving up 68.1 ppg (211th overall), have a positive rebound margin of 2.8 (121st overall) and a defensive field goal % of 41.2% (132 overall).

What does it all mean? It is safe to say that a lot of Bruin fans expected the Bruins to be 15-2 or 16-1 or even 17-0 at this juncture, with a Top 10 RPI while having inhabited the Top-25 every week. No one expected Tyler Lamb and Josh Smith to leave. Rather, most of us expected them to be key components to a veteran core of players leading the way. Certainly no one expected us to lose to Cal-Poly or to struggle to beat Georgia or have to go to overtime to beat UCI. Clearly initial expectations for many were not met. But… is that bad?

I would suggest perhaps not. Maybe some expectations were unfair, or unrealistic, or based on a little too much hype, or even deliberately onerous goals set by frustrated long-time fans longing to see Coach Howland gone. Who knows if a Top 15 rating out of the gate was honestly realistic? What I do know is that our new “reality”, at least for this edition of the Bruins, is not necessarily bad and can maybe even be viewed as cautiously optimistic… with a slight chance of exciting.

The truth is at this point in the season we’re playing an exciting brand of basketball with three starters that are legitimate double digit scoring weapons from almost anywhere in the half court. We have one of the most prolific assist leaders in the country. We are on a nine-game win streak which includes a win over a Top 20 team in Missouri. At 4-0, we’re in first place in a modestly resurgent Pac-12 that is currently projected to place four teams in the Big Dance, and 2-0 on the road in conference. Incidentally, despite some poo-pooing here and there on the web, the road sweep of Utah and Colorado was impressive. RPI projected losses in both games. Zero teams swept the Utah and Colorado weekend last season. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the Pac-12 fairs in the mountains. I wouldn’t bet against Colorado holding serve at home the rest of the season.

So was the first half of the season a success? Not quite as much as we had hoped. Not necessarily in the manner we expected. Not with the all people we anticipated… but it sez here the answer to that question is: yes.