Howland: "This is part of the game"

UCLA head basketball coach Ben Howland’s weekly briefing centered on the various injuries suffered by the Bruins since their return from Michigan:

"Darren Collison sprained his ankle yesterday. He probably could do some shooting today but I just felt it was better to hold him out, so he was just getting treatment today. Lorenzo [Mata-Real] the same thing, so we won’t make a decision on either one of them until tomorrow."

Howland said that Collison "actually collided with Russell foot to foot and just kind of twisted it a little bit. It had nothing to do with his knee." He also noted that Collison was close to his old form before the twist in practice and that "He did a great job during the Christmas break. He worked out every day, two hours a day. I don’t think that ankle is going to impact him [long-term]."

Mata-Real suffered his groin pull in practice, "sliding, on a defensive close-out," said Howland. "The main thing is I don’t want them to injure it worse. I think that Lorenzo’s injury is a little more precarious than an ankle, because a groin can be a long, long-standing injury. A groin [injury] is not something you play with at all. His is not a major groin pull. I want to treat it with caution and be conservative."

And that’s not the end of the UCLA team’s health woes. "Mike [Roll]’s been sick. He’s still not back to full strength. Kevin [Love] missed the day before yesterday’s practice; he had the flu and was throwing up all day on the 26th coming right back from Portland, so that’s going around a little bit. Lorenzo was sick back in Michigan, so we’ve got three guys that have been under the weather, plus myself right now."

Of Roll, Howland noted that prior to suffering the plantar fasciitis injury, he was playing his best basketball ever at UCLA. "When you take a month off," Howland explained, "it’s so difficult. It takes time to come back; it’s an arduous process. He couldn’t do a whole lot of anything because you can’t stop, plant, start, move; he did a little bit, but not like game-like conditions. He’ll get it back. He shot it well yesterday prior to practice."

Asked about the overall impact of the injuries so far this season, Howland noted "We had that same problem two years ago. Unfortunately for us, we don’t have the same amount of depth we had two years ago. So it makes it a little tougher. It’s distracting, from being able to be at our best, at full strength. I think we’re getting closer to getting there, it’s just we still have things [to work on]. This [injuries] is part of the game."