Howland: 'It’s a unique way they play'

Asked at his weekly news conference about Memphis’ often poor foul shooting, UCLA head basketball Coach Ben Howland said: "They were 30 for 36 in their last game. Sometimes when you’re winning by 20 and 30 points, your focus, you know, 84-51, 85-62, I’m just looking at some of their scores here, there’s some annihilation going on, 88-66 . . . actually, I’m looking at the wrong deal, I’m looking at us; where are their scores?"

That drew a big laugh from the assembled reporters, but Howland got serious pretty quickly about the Tigers:

"It starts with [Derrick] Rose. Rose is so good. When he does decide to come out, he’ll be the first or second pick in the draft. Jason Kidd is a very good analogy, but with a better jump shot at the same stage. I mean Jason Kidd is one of the all-time great point guards in the history of this game, so that’s pretty high praise for a young man and I mean it. Chris Douglas-Roberts is terrific; he’s such a hard match-up. He’s grown: He came in at 6-5, he’s 6-7 now, he’s long, he really puts the ball on the floor. They’re a very, very good team in putting the ball on the floor and making plays for others and they run that same kind of offense where there’s a lot of hand-offs, a lot of penetration and kicking. As soon as you come to help, they just throw it at the rim and they just go and dunk it. So we really have our hands full trying to defend them.

"[Robert] Dozier is a very good player. [Joey] Dorsey seems like he’s been at Memphis forever; I remember recruiting him when I was at Pitt, 6-7 years ago. I think [Antonio] Anderson, their second-leading assist guy on the team, is an outstanding player. They have really good depth with [Willie] Kemp coming off the bench and [Shawn] Taggert, so we really have our hands full.

"[Douglas-Roberts] is very skilled with the ball, at putting the ball on the floor and making plays. He attacks the rim, he can knock down a three, he’s a good offensive rebounder, he’s good posting up. He likes to catch the ball 10-12 feet out with a guy on his back and then he will back you down, spin off you; he’s got a game. He can do it all.

"They’ll be pressing, so we’ve got to be smart and take the opportunities to score easy, open baskets and shots when they’re available, but at the same time, it starts with us being able to defend them. When you look at what they’ve done, we played Michigan State, we were down 12 to Michigan State without Darren Collison; they had them down 30 in the first half last Thursday, 50-20.

"They had Texas, who beat us here in our home floor, down 17 in the first half of their game on Sunday and they are annihilating people. That’s how good they are. They are a very high-level team and that’s why they are 37-1 and could have been, at this point, 38-0. They’ve had, really, two close calls. I thought USC had a chance to beat them, no question; [Daniel] Hackett missed a free throw that probably would have won the game for them with a few seconds to go and they had a close call with UAB. Other than that, with the one loss to Tennessee, everything else has been smooth sailing. And they played a tough schedule: they crushed UConn early in the year. They’ve had a very good non-conference schedule; they beat Gonzaga by 8-10 [and] Gonzaga is a good team."

Asked about Memphis’s style of offense, Howland said: "It’s a unique way they play; they have that Vance Walberg -– who was the head coach at Pepperdine and a very successful junior college coach up in Fresno -– system and that system works really well when you have really good players, as most systems will. But it’s an unorthodox style of offense and very difficult to defend. There’s not a lot of screens and it’s all about penetration to draw and kick. There’s a lot of hand-offs, lot of pitches from behind and they also do like a moving screen; he’ll pass from guard to guard and then he’ll try to run and just clip the guy as he’s driving. Invariably, when you have a guy almost run to you, you kind of flinch and move, so there is no foul. But that’s what they do when you study them."

>> So how do you slow the Tigers down? "The real hard thing against Memphis is when you come to block a shot, they have an unorthodox way of how they react to that. They just jump in the air, they lob up at about 11 feet and you’re in the air trying to block and they’ve just lobbed it way over you and their big guy underneath is just grabbing it and dunking it. I can show you 50 times that they’ve driven and lobbed for dunks in their 38 games and it’s probably more, like 100 times, 150 times. We want to do a good job of staying in front of the ball, that’s the main thing. It’s hard: if you don’t come to help, they’re going to dunk it on you and if you do come to help, they’re going to dunk it on you. So, the good part would be to stay in front of them.

"When Darren [Collison] got his fourth foul [versus Western Kentucky], he had a difficult time because he was playing with his hands in his pocket. He had a couple of fouls that were not good plays. You’ve got to know that when you have your third foul, you can’t go right back in there and get a fourth foul, especially when you have an 18-point lead. But for the most part, [Collison and Russell Westbrook] have been very good [staying in front of the ball] throughout the year."

>> Will Collison guard Rose? "He’ll definitely be guarding Rose, but you’ll also see Russell potentially guarding him some. It is a difficult match-up because Rose is bigger than he is, but he’s dealt with that before. It’s just hard. [Rose] is not just big, he’s really good, that’s the main thing, he’s a really, really good player. He’s as athletic as any point guard that I’ve seen; I can’t remember a point guard that athletic. For example, [D.J.] Augustin played great against us; Augustin had real problems with Derrick Rose on Sunday."

>> Howland said that in the team’s film study, "we’ll show parts of all different aspects of each game -– we don’t break it down game by game -– here they are in transition offense, here is what they do; this is what they do in their half-court sets; here is their personnel, here’s highlights. When we get to the personnel part, our guys will enjoy watching it because you’ll see some of the most amazing dunks and lobs and athletic plays; there will be a lot of oohs and aahs coming out of the popcorn gallery."

>> The Bruin coach was asked about the advantages of being in a third straight Final Four, whether it was more about the games themselves or off the court. He said: "I think outside the games more than anything. For example, on Friday morning, we have to be at the arena at 10:45 and we don’t leave until 1:30. So we’re there for three hours between a 50-minute required practice and the rest of it is all media. When you go through stuff like that for the first time, it’s a little different than having done it before, because it’s draining, it’s nonstop."

>> He also had a short, but somewhat comical injury report: "Alfred [Aboya] had a knot in his back yesterday and couldn’t work out or do anything because he had been putting together some furniture that he bought from Ikea and he was three hours in the same position using a screwdriver. I don’t know what the heck it was or what he was doing, but that was poor news. The trainer said he should be OK by today."

>> Asked about Kevin Love’s improvement as a defensive player, Howland said: "He’s developed into a good defensive player. And a lot of it is the experience of learning so many new things, at least how we do things. Every program is different in terms of how they play defense, or what they teach. We have a lot of intricate rotations and we expect to do things defensively that are sometimes, maybe, unique. But he’s really, really tough, he’s hard-nosed, he’s really become a good defensive player and I think probably he would tell you he’s in the best condition of his life because to be able to play that hard defensively and still perform like he does offensively really speaks well. He had to play 20 straight minutes in the second half of the Western Kentucky game; I think he played 37 minutes in that game, or 36. He’s getting beat up; his minutes are hard because it’s a physical game where he’s at, down low. So it’s been very, very impressive, his growth as a defensive player and a rebounder. He’s getting rebounds in traffic and the one thing I said is he’s really done a good job of blocking shots over the last few games. I think he had two blocks against Xavier, he had seven against A&M and I’m not sure how many he had against Western Kentucky. Three, four?

"James Keefe also had four in that game. It’s amazing how many blocked shots we’ve had. I think we had 13 blocked shots [versus] Mississippi Valley State, we had a number of them against A&M –- 11 of them –- that’s impressive.

"I think a lot of Kevin’s blocks against A&M were on offensive rebounds by the other team. Sometimes it comes when you’re beat on penetration and he’s coming to help.

"When you’re ranked the No. 1 high school player in the country, there are high expectations. The great thing is, I think he’s exceeded my expectations for how good he would be as a freshman and I have high expectations. He’s done a great job."

>> Howland was also quizzed about getting more scoring balance after Collison and Love scored most of UCLA’s points against Western Kentucky. "Josh [Shipp] had a very good game against Western Kentucky. I think Russell was good; I think Russell had double figures in both games this past Thursday and Saturday. James Keefe gave us good balance off the bench with his first of what we hope will be many double-doubles down the road. It would be nice to have balance."

>> On the role of injuries, he said: "When we get together every year, this group and myself, Oct. 13 or whenever we meet, one of the things I always say is ‘you have no control over the injuries during the season’ and it really does impact what kind of year you’re going to have, if you’re able to stay healthy. For example, Luc [Richard Mbah A Moute]’s second sprained ankle, even though it’s been very difficult on him, helped James Keefe emerge all of a sudden into being a very effective player. Maybe if he doesn’t hurt his ankle then we don’t win against Western Kentucky, because James is thrown in there without having that SC-Stanford experience. And that happened to us two years ago, when we had the most injuries ever; you know Mike Roll developed more because of it, Ryan Hollins got to develop more because of Lorenzo [Mata-Real]’s injuries so on and so forth. Being able to deal with all that adversity is critical and James has been great, the way he’s fought back and had to overcome a very difficult surgery to his shoulder and perform very well right now."

>> Off the topic of Saturday’s game, Howland was asked about the comments of some Bruin players that the season won’t be a success unless the Bruins win the national championship. He responded: "We’ve had a very successful season. To be 35-3 and win the Pac-10 regular season, win the Pac-10 Conference Tournament and now get to a third straight Final Four, that’s very successful. We'll be completely satisfied [with that], no, obviously, we want to try and win our next game and have a chance to play Monday night. But to say it wasn’t successful, I think that would be wrong."

>> On how hard it is for coaches to get their first head job: "When I got the Northern Arizona job, it was because no one else really wanted it, per se. And there were still 70-80 applicants, but it wasn’t like they were getting [high-profile applicants]. They had been in the bottom ten in terms of winning percentage the previous decade and I got a really 'secure' one-year contract for $60,000. So some people would question, do you want to go to a program that’s never [won]. But you look at who’re getting jobs, they’re usually assistant coaches from successful programs that have been with a successful head coach that has a good background. All athletic directors, especially at the high-major programs, want a proven head coach that has a track record."

>> On players coming to college for only a year or two and then moving on: "I’ve been, between Pittsburgh and here, nine years at the high-major level and we’ve had three players leave early in nine years. So it’s obviously happened more here than happened in my four years in Pittsburgh at all. But it’s more difficult from the standpoint of being able to plan the future. That’s where college football has such a great advantage, where you know you have players for three years. Having a great player for one year or two years is still a great problem that you want to have. You want to get the best players that fit into the program that are good kids. Arron Afflalo is already planning to come back and take some summer school classes to continue working toward finishing his degree; he’s very close. Those are great kids, so I appreciate the opportunity to work with them."

Looking ahead to the Final Four once again, Howland said: "The experience of having been there is always a valuable experience when you go the next time. That being said, I think this is a tremendously difficult game against Memphis as I have studied them now more and more. They’re so good. In my opinion, they’re much better than the last time we played Memphis and we played them twice in the same year that [2005-06 season]."