Main
| August 2007 »
Scouts Inc. writers Antonio Williams and Bob Gibbons spent some summer days in the desert watching young basketball prospects play all day in the Reebok Summer Championships and the adidas Super 64 last week.
Of note to UCLA fans was the performance of potential future Bruin, 6-9 Renardo Sidney of Artesia High School, playing on the LA Dream Team in the Reebok tournament. The Dream Team lost to King of the Court, 61-54, in the quarterfinals of the RBK Create or Finish Cup. According to the Scouts.com report, "Sidney disappointed with his effort and energy, finishing with 12 points (4-13 FG) and 10 rebounds. At one juncture during the game, with the score knotted at 50 and 2 minutes left on the clock, Sidney found himself on the bench, atypical for a player billed as the best in his class. His sub-par [effort] has left doubts about his status as the nation’s No. 1 junior."
Things went better for four other potential future Bruins in the adidas Super 64, playing for Pump-n-Run Elite against Playaz Basketball Club at the Cox Pavilion on the UNLV campus: "Pump-n-Run was led by the future backcourt for UCLA, 6-4 SG Jrue Holiday (North Hollywood, Calif.), who scored 18 points while 6-3 PG Jerime Anderson (Anaheim, Calif.) Had 13 points. Class of 2009 prospects twins David and Travis Wear, both from Santa Ana, Calif. impressed with their play, as did North Carolina-recruit 6-2 PG Larry Drew, Jr. (Woodland Hills, Calif.), son of former NBA player and current Atlanta Hawks assistant Larry Drew." Pump-n-Run lost in overtime, 90-88.
 How much have Ben Olson and Patrick Cowan learned from Jay Norvell? How effective will Kai Forbath be as a replacement for Justin Medlock? Will Nikola Dragovic and Tom Blake be able to fill Justin Hickman’s shoes?
Those are only some of the questions that may start to be answered on August 18, when UCLA debuts its 2007 football team at a free scrimmage at Drake Stadium(capacity: 11,142; pictured above) on campus, beginning at 11:00 a.m.
The gates will open at 9:30 a.m. and the scrimmage will comprise about 80 plays from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. with autographs available on the field from 12:30-1:00 p.m.
UCLA has a plethora of promotions going on during the day:
>> The first 2,500 attendees will receive a free team poster, distributed at the Drake Stadium gate at the top of Bruin Walk, near Young Drive.
>> Free Fall Scrimmage Rosters will be distributed for the scrimmage and 100 of these will be selected for free prizes.
>> Two new fan-outreach programs will be available: the Bruin Kids Club, presented by Mattel’s Children’s Hospital for those aged 13 and younger and the Bruin Locker Room, a program of e-mail updates and promotional offers (free).
>> Purchasers of season tickets for football, men’s basketball or women’s basketball will receive a free duffle bag.
Parking is $8 on campus with Lots 4 (off Sunset), 6 and 7 (off Westwood Boulevard) available. The roof level of Lot 8 is also a good option.
Tracy Pierson of Scout.com reported that UCLA received a verbal commitment from Valencia junior-to-be cornerback Marlon Pollard, beating out most of the Pac-10, including Cal, Oregon, USC and Washington, along with Colorado.
He is listed at 6-0 and 149 pounds and had 15 tackles for Valencia during his sophomore season, according to Scout.com. He’s also a sprinter and jumper for the Vikings track team, training under former Bruin and Olympic gold medal winner Sherri Howard at Valencia. He has the school sophomore class records in the high jump (6-2), long jump (21-4) and triple jump (43-11).
It’s UCLA’s first verbal commitment for its 2009 class.
 UCLA’s men’s soccer team, which reached the national final before losing to UC Santa Barbara amid snowy conditions in St. Louis last season, has been ranked no. 1 in the nation in a pre-season poll by College Soccer News.
CSN wrote of the top-ranked Bruins:
"Make no mistake about it, this team is loaded with talent and top-notch competitive experience. Begin with the fact that nine starters are back from the 2006 team that advanced to the national championship match. Sophomore forward David Estrada (12g, 4a, pictured right), junior midfielders Sal Zizzo (7g, 9a) and Tony Beltran (0g, 1a), sophomore midfielder Kyle Nakazawa (4g, 8a), and senior defender Mike Zaher are among the prime timers who return. Consider the fact that defender Brandon Owens and forward Maxwell Griffin (5g, 1a) return after sustaining injuries in 2006. Look at the high level of competitive play that many of the Bruins have engaged in since the end of the 2006 season. Throw in the fact that players often improve the most between their freshman and sophomore seasons which bodes well for the young Bruins. Add in the fact that UCLA will feature one of the countries premier goalkeepers in sophomore Brian Perk and it is clear that Jorge Salcedo’s UCLA Bruins have what it takes to win it all in 2007."
Zizzo has left UCLA to sign with Hannover 96 of the German Bundesliga, but all the others will return. Everyone will find out how good the Bruins actually are right away as UCLA opens with three ranked opponents on the road: no. 11 Notre Dame on August 31 at Bloomington, Indiana; at no. 8 Indiana on September 2, and at no. 21 Creighton on September 8.
Behind the Bruins in the pre-season poll are Duke, UC Santa Barbara, Wake Forest and Santa Clara in the top five, then Virginia, SMU, Indiana, Maryland and New Mexico.
UCLA has won four NCAA soccer titles, the last in 2002.
 "Today wasn't the day for us. We didn't show up. You can't win them all."
Especially in pouring rain. Bruin sophomore Nicole Leach, already the bronze medalist in the 400-meter hurdles, ran the anchor leg for the U.S. in the 4x400-meter relay at the Pan American Games in Rio on Saturday, holding on for a bronze medal.
The U.S. track & field team, one of the weakest ever sent to a Pan American Games, had a women’s foursome of Debbie Dunn, Angel Perkins (from Cerritos), Latonia Wilson and Leach in the relay, none of whom even made the final in the U.S. 400 m championships in June. Leach was third in the 400 m hurdles final. Former Bruin Monique Henderson, who would have been the anchor, was injured during the 400 meter races.
In the race in Rio, Leach had a slight lead at the final exchange, not nearly enough to hold off Pan Am 400-meter bronze medalist Indira Terrero of Cuba and three-time Pan Am gold medalist Ana Guevara of Mexico, who passed Leach to take first and second. Leach crossed the line in third in 3:27.84.
Leach leaves Rio with two bronzes and will now concentrate on the IAAF World Track & Field Championships in Osaka, Japan, that will start on August 25.
For an interesting look at the anti-American sentiment that plagued the U.S. team all during the Pan American Games, check out one of Leach's diary entries for the UCLA Bruins.com website.
Rivals.com posted a note that Mountain Ridge (Phoenix, Arizona) High School punter Jeff Locke, a three-star prospect, has made a verbal commitment to attend UCLA.
He’s the no. 3-rated kicker on the Rivals list and no. 17 on their list of Arizona prospects. He reportedly chose the Bruins over Arizona State, Washington State, Wisconsin, South Carolina and others.
If correct, it’s UCLA’s 23rd verbal commitment in a fine recruiting class currently ranked second in the nation by Rivals, with Notre Dame listed at no. 1.
UCLA’s incumbent punter, Aaron Perez, will be a junior this coming season.
An ESPN.com survey of 15 college football experts, including 14 who work for ESPN, named USC as the no. 1 college football program of the last decade, spanning the period of 1997-2006.
UCLA was the no. 3 program listed from the Pac-10 at no. 27, with Oregon at 17th. Behind the Bruins were California (35), Oregon State (37), Arizona State (41), Washington State (43), Washington (52), Arizona (71) and Stanford (82).
The Bruins were named to the top 25 on two of the 15 ballots, both times at no. 21, by ESPN The Magazine’s Bruce Feldman and by Joe Schad, one of ESPN’s college football reporters. USC was first on nine ballots and never lower than seventh.
Ivan Maisel, writing on ESPN.com commented, "you could make the case that USC didn't dominate the decade long enough to deserve to be No. 1. But the most interesting observation to come out of this ranking is the realization that none of the teams has been dominant for 10 years. Bob Stoops has made No. 5 Oklahoma into a power over his eight seasons, but in the two years before his arrival, the Sooners won a total of nine games.
"No. 4 Florida endured the moderate three-year dip under Ron Zook. The only team that can make a good case for 10 consecutive successful seasons is Ohio State, which is No. 2. The Buckeyes, however, have one fewer national championship than the Trojans, and their four seasons under John Cooper in this decade produced a lot of wins, but not enough of them in big games."
So a decade that starts out 6-5 (under John Robinson), then 8-5, 6-6, 5-7 (with Paul Hackett), and finishes 6-6, 11-2, 12-1, 13-0, 12-1 and 11-2 (with Pete Carroll) equates to domination. By that standard, UCLA’s basketball squad will probably be the nation’s top basketball program over the past decade after three more years, which will still include the last three seasons under Steve Lavin.
Are you kidding? I'm jogging a "Script Ohio" right now!
 A lot was made of LSU coach Les Miles’s comments in front of a booster group in New Orleans in late June at yesterday’s Pac-10 Football Media Day. According to a July 1 report by Carl DuBois in the Baton Rouge Advocate, Miles said:
"I can tell you that I would like nothing better than to play USC for the title.
"I can tell you this, they have a much easier road to travel. They’re going to play real knockdown drag-outs with UCLA and Washington, Cal-Berkeley and Stanford - some real juggernauts - and they’re going to end up, it would be my guess, in some position so if they win a game or two, that they’ll end up in the title [game]. I would like that path for us.
"I think the SEC provides much stiffer competition."
It’s nice for Miles to stick up for his conference, but he should at least disclose that he doesn’t know much about what he’s talking about. As a head coach at Oklahoma State (2001-04) and at LSU (2005-06), he’s played a grand total of four games against Pac-10 teams. His OSU teams were 1-1 against UCLA and his LSU teams beat Arizona State with a miracle fourth-quarter comeback in 2005, 35-31, and then crushed Arizona, 45-3 last season.
Going back to his days as an assistant coach, Miles’s teams had a good but not great record of 13-8 against Pac-10 opponents. When he was at Michigan during two tours of duty, those teams were 9-2 against the Pac-10, losing only to USC and Washington in the Rose Bowl. But in his five years as an assistant at Colorado, his teams were 4-6 against the Pac-10 including two drubbings by UCLA squads (1982, 1984) on which Karl Dorrell was a receiver.
Just our hunch, but what Miles was really doing in that speech in New Orleans wasn’t promoting his conference, but covering his backside. Although his team is favored to win the SEC, Miles is telling the faithful that if they don’t make it to the BCS Championship game, it’ll be because they play in such a tough conference.
Balderdash. LSU has Mississippi State, Middle Tennessee State, a home game with South Carolina and a trip to New Orleans to play Tulane as four of its first five games, along with a hard game at home against Virginia Tech on September 8. Then they have four hard games with Florida at home, at Kentucky (not that hard), home to Auburn and at Alabama (with an extra week to prepare) and then finish with Louisiana Tech, at Mississippi and home to Arkansas.
With Virginia Tech, Florida and Auburn at home, Miles has nothing to complain about. He just has to stop making excuses and win.
Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen began yesterday’s Pac-10 Football Media Day noting that 31 All-Pac-10 players would be returning for this season: 11 of the first team and 20 from the second team.
And a conference football attendance record was set for the second consecutive year with more than 3.6 million going to Pac-10 games, an average of more than 56,000 a game. Hansen noted that the average was larger than several of the conference’s stadiums!
The sixth-place Pac-10 team will play in a new bowl game for this year only, the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl in Ft. Worth on December 31, before a new agreement for the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl and San Diego Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl kicks in for the following two years for the sixth and seventh-place teams.
And the usually droll Hansen got off a good line before leaving the stage: "We have no plans to expand the Pac-10 at this time, unlike the Big Ten which is trying to get to12 so it isn’t 11."
A rules seminar that preceded the media session noted the return to most of the timing rules which existed prior to last season. Pac-10 Coordinator of Officials Dave Cutaia noted that the NCAA calculated that an average game had 19 less plays in 2006 than in 2005!
Cutaia also said that an average of 14.79 penalties were called per game in 2006 and that the most frequently-called infractions were for (1) false start, 211 times; (2) offensive holding, 163 times and (3) defensive pass interference, 89 times.
It’s also quite likely that the NCAA will adopt, in the next few years, a time-between-plays rule like the NFL’s, which permits 40 seconds between most plays but allows only 25 seconds after a stoppage such as a called or television time-out.
"We’re really expecting a great season. Our football team has enjoyed an upbeat off-season and we have the intention of really putting together a great team. Everything has been upbeat and along with the expectation about being the top team in country adds to the fun and build-up and all. We will go for it see what we can put together."
That was Pete Carroll’s take on the 2007 football season at USC at yesterday’s Pac-10 Football Media Day. He knows he has a powerful team and he knows that everyone else knows it as well. So he didn’t beat it into the ground.
Asked about the large perceived gap between USC and the rest of the conference, Carroll demurred: "Gap? Our toughest games by far were in the conference. This is an extraordinary conference with tremendous offenses and excellent football players. If you look at our score spreads [margin of victory], it’s obvious that the best teams we play are in this conference."
He and quarterback John David Booty were asked about what to look for on this year’s team with Booty excited about receivers Patrick Turner and Vidal Hazelton and Carroll enthused about a new fullback. "Stanley Havili is really a good football player," Carroll said. "We feel good about the position. We have three guys in an aspect of our offense we were a couple dimensions down [last year] from where we want to be."
Booty said that, especially for the players who had been in the program during the Leinart-Bush-White days, a two-loss season like last year’s 11-2 is motivation to do better. He was happy about the large number of new players, especially at the skill positions, who can make big plays this season.
A final wrap on Pac-10 Football Media Day still to come. . .
|
|
Subscribe to this Blog What is RSS?