Howland: 'We’re just trying to win on Thursday'

Bruin basketball Coach Ben Howland likes the Pac-10 conference tournament and hopes his team can win it.

"We just take it one game at a time," he told reporters at his regular Tuesday news conference. "We’re just trying to win on Thursday, see if we can turn around. If we win on Thursday, we’ll have 24 hours before we play again on Friday — it’s kind of like when you’re in Maui, it’s the same type of deal. In Kansas City this year, we played back-to-back nights. I’m not planning anything differently, hoping to get to Saturday. We’re trying to get to Friday from Thursday’s game."

On the conference tournament itself, he was emphatic: "I think it’s great for the conference and I really was a proponent when I got here five years ago to have all 10 teams in. Having participated in the Big East Tournament is an incredible experience; it is such a big deal to all those programs and fans every year, having had a consistent home for that tournament year in and year out at Madison Square Garden. It’s important that we have all 10 teams in every year so that families and people that come can plan on coming every year. There’s so much to do here in Los Angeles; this is the right place to have it because there is so much for people, fans that follow different programs to come here and have fun things to do and enjoy the warm weather. I like it and the publicity it receives; if you don’t have one, I think it hurts you as a league and I think it hurt the Pac-10 in the past. I think it’s good for the conference and it makes money."

Asked what motivation the Bruins will have since they are regular season champions, Howland said,  "You’re continuing your momentum that you gained through the regular season. In our case, you’re trying to get a high seed in the NCAA Tournament. And it’s different like if you’re in the Big Sky and you have to win the tournament and you’re not going. You’re also playing because you want to win the conference tournament and be able to say you did both.

"It really is hard though when you have to play in your conference 21 times if you’re the final two teams playing on Saturday at 3 o’clock. It’s an unbelievable grind, as it is. And we do it differently in this conference than in any other conference in that we’re playing Thursday-Saturday typically (we had two Thursday-Sundays this year), but Thursday-Saturday makes it even more of a grind because of the quick turnaround on your games. The positive about that is that it prepares you well for NCAA Tournament play because, typically, that’s how they do it in the tournament. Very few leagues do it like that; none of the major conferences."

And he knows that UCLA’s opponents will be ready. "Whoever we play is going to be very motivated to beat us," he said. "If we don’t show up ready to go, we’ll lose. That hasn’t changed since November. You have to be ready to play against everybody you’re competing against."

Other highlights:

>> Howland was obviously delighted with UCLA’s victories over Stanford and Cal to clinch the conference title. "It was a good weekend to be able to come out on top of those two games. I’ve never been involved with back-to-back games like that as a head coach, assistant coach or player that I can remember. That was incredible and I think the fans had fun that were here at the games, so that’s always nice. I know for our players it was a great experience. I think what we gained is it was good to know that no matter what the circumstance is, you’re never out of a game until that thing says 0:00, including [against] Cal, where we punched the ball out of bounds; they had a shot they could have won the game on.

"One thing I really am proud about our team is they never, ever give up. They always think they are going to find a way to win the game. You have to be able to do that. We’ve had a lot of comebacks, not just this year, but over three years of games we’ve been down. Last year, as I remember, we seemed like we were down so much at the end of halves and they never lost their composure, they always felt they were going to come back. That happened much more a year ago — not big deficits, but being down seven at the half, down five, down nine — I remember that, somehow, we’ve been a second-half team the last couple of years.

"I think people play well against us. I would rather be up bell to bell, come out and jump on people and stay that way, but that’s not how it works. And you see that throughout the whole country. The parity in college basketball: there’s not huge differences, in our league, between the first team and the ninth team. It’s very, very minute. You have to have a lot of things go right for you. Staying healthy is a big part of it. Losing Michael [Roll] this year has been rough for us and having Luc [Richard Mbah A Moute] out. We went three out of four games without Luc in the lineup; that’s really, really incredible to me, because he’s integral, he’s important."

>> Howland was keen to note the important of Mbah A Moute to the Bruins’ success. "He had two double-doubles [last weekend]. He and Darren [Collison] both — if you look at them and study them — their second halves are typically better than their first halves. I think when they come out, and Luc in particular, when he really plays well in the first half and is energized, it really makes us better. I think you can go back to the Washington State game, the Washington game a year ago here, when he comes out and he’s really, really active, that makes a huge difference in our team.

"Luc’s a great player in terms of [playing in big games]. I think he’s played well for most of the year, especially when you consider that part of his year was hampered with the ankle injury, even though he played after being out a week, he was still not at full strength and it took a couple more weeks."

>> On Josh Shipp’s continuing shooting problems, Howland said he advised him to "continue to shoot and take good shots, leave his hand up and follow through, just continue to work at it and be positive. I think he took eight shots from three [-point range] Saturday; that’s a lot of threes, so I wouldn’t say he’s gun shy. He was driving toward the basket when he made that last shot on Saturday."

>> On Shipp’s final shot, called by some an illegal over-the-backboard shot, Howland said, "We’d have to go back and most of you are too young to remember Lynn Shackelford, but that was his shot, from the corners. So we’d have to rewrite the record books. His release, the arc on his shot was always higher than the backboard. When you look at where you shoot from the corner in front of our bench and you arc the ball, which goes over the top of the backboard, but it’s at the corner and that’s a legal shot. It was the same angle [as Shipp’s shot].

"And I think Lynn was at the game on Saturday, so he probably would have said, ‘Big deal, I did that all the time.’ I think [NCAA supervisor of officials] Hank Nichols addressed it and he addressed it perfectly, so you can go back and look that up if you didn’t see it."

>> On Collison, Howland said, "Darren really got off to a poor start on Saturday. I thought a lot of his [trouble] was just still being emotionally drained from Thursday’s game. As the game got going, he started to pick things up."

Asked about how he’s preparing for the tournament, not knowing whether the Bruins will play California or Washington, he said the practices would be "more focused on us and our execution, what we’re doing, especially offensively."

He added, "We just played Cal, there’s a good chance we could play Cal — a 50% chance — and I think [Washington’s Jon] Brockman is on crutches. That obviously is a factor in that game, but I still think Washington, with or without Jon, will play extremely tough and that will be a very hard game to call. If he’s on crutches today, I’d be shocked if he played Wednesday. And one thing that is not good for sprains is to get up in a plane and fly three hours, which they have to do today."

He also noted that Cal "did a few little wrinkles that if we played them again we would be aware of that were kind of new for that game. Overall, I thought our hedges were decent. They did a few things differently to try and attack that differently." But he declined to be specific; maybe he will have some new things to show the Bears on Thursday if they meet once again.

Ben Howland photo courtesy of UCLA