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Point guard Cedric Bozeman – the most highly-regarded of the three true freshman recruits on the UCLA basketball team – surely has.

Following the Bruins last game at the Maui Invitational, he sat in the back of the press room while a reporter, not aware that Bozeman was present, asked Bruin head coach Steve Lavin why Bozeman was progressing more slowly than the team’s other two freshmen – forward Andre Patterson and guard/forward Dijon Thompson.

This was something new. When Bozeman was a prep All-American at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, Calif., rarely did someone say anything critical of him.

Welcome to big-time Division I college basketball.

Bozeman shyly tilted his head down as Lavin defended his play, looking as if didn’t want to be there.

But a week after the incident, Bozeman hardly remembered the reporter’s comment.

“I didn’t pay attention to it,” he said. “It comes with the territory. At UCLA, if you have a bad game the press is all over you.”

For Bozeman, Patterson and Thompson, dealing with the media has been the least of their problems.

Bozeman, of course, tore the meniscus in his right knee and will be sidelined for another month or so.

But even before that, Bozeman, like Patterson and Thompson, was having difficulty on the court.

The college game, far different from the game they played in high school, has befuddled the freshmen at times. The game, which used to unfold in slow motion for them at the prep level, suddenly sped up, became more intense.

“Uh...” Thompson said, laughing, when asked how comfortable he felt on the court after the first two weeks of the season.

“There’s a little bit more to get used to,” continued Thompson, who has seen time at both guard positions and small forward. “It’s difficult. It’s a lot harder.”

Yet, while they have looked clueless during some spurts, all three have also given indication that they can eventually help their team be among the elite squads in college basketball.

“All three freshmen are going to contribute this year,” UCLA head coach Steve Lavin said. “Cedric received all of the hype coming in, but Dijon and Andre are just as special.”

The trio received an early education, both in the classroom and on the court, when they arrived at UCLA in early August for summer school classes. They spent a lot of time playing pick-up ball in the Men’s Gym, where NBA players such as Chris Webber, Paul Pierce, Baron Davis, Corey Maggette and Tracy Murray frequently dropped in.

In those pick-up games, Thompson said, he and his two incoming classmates learned “a lot of tricks.”

“Cheap stuff,” Thompson said. “They were elbowing, pushing and holding all the time and nobody would see them do it.”

After facing the likes of Webber on a daily basis, joining Jason Kapono and company for the Bruins’ fall practice wasn’t as big an adjustment as it normally would have been. Even then, the transition wasn’t smooth.

“It wasn’t that easy,” Patterson said. “Here, you’re with 12 guys who can really play. In high school, you could do whatever you wanted to.”

Just as the freshmen had to adjust to the different level of play, they also had to get used to a higher level of discipline. Thompson, who wasn’t used to taking instructions from anyone, was surprised in one of the team’s early practices when Lavin yelled at him for not being low enough in his defensive stance during drills.

“I was like, ‘Wow, why me?’” said Thompson, who didn’t think he was doing anything wrong.

With practices closed to the public and to the media, no one outside of the basketball program knew how the freshmen were performing. But according to their teammates and coaches, the group looked gifted, the most gifted of them being Bozeman, the only one of the batch slated to start.

Then the Golden Child went down.

In UCLA’s first exhibition game of the season, Bozeman bruised his tailbone and exited the contest early, never to return to the court that day. He sat out the next exhibition game as well.

His first extended live-game experience, therefore, came in Maui, where he shot poorly and turned the ball over 11 times in three games.

Was he really the point guard that everyone had been talking about?

Internet message boards were soon filled with postings written by people who had previously never seen Bozeman play, yet who felt disappointed with his performance.

His outings may not have been viewed as critically as they were had it not been for those of Patterson and Thompson, whose energetic play off the bench looked promising.

Patterson vanquished any doubts about his ability, showing an uncanny talent to score from inside. Thompson, meanwhile, used his versatility to get minutes at various positions. Both players said the two exhibition games allowed them to better acclimate themselves to the speed of the college game.

“The exhibition games really helped me out,” Patterson said. “I got a little more confidence each time I was out there.”

Bozeman never got those opportunities, and to make matters worse for him, he started the games – at the most difficult position on the court.

“It set me back a little bit,” Bozeman said of his bruised tailbone, which still bothered him a bit in Maui. “I didn’t practice much for two weeks.”

That isn’t to say Bozeman’s shortcomings are necessarily curable. His outside shooting is indefensible, and in Maui, he didn’t look like much of a penetrator.

On a few occasions in UCLA’s Nov. 28 loss to Pepperdine, however, he managed to slash into the lane and make the opposing defense collapse in spite of the swelling in his knee that occurred upon his team’s return from Maui. Sure, the progress may have been slight, but it was there. Improvement will take time, especially now that Bozeman is injured.

And Lavin is willing to live with that. Or rather, he has to force himself to live with that. He needs to be patient not only with Bozeman but with the other two freshmen as well.

Bozeman is his only legitimate option at point guard and he will need Patterson and Thompson to come off the bench to score an extra point or grab an extra rebound.

“They’re going to go through some stretches that are tough,” Lavin said. “But the only way to get the kids experience is to play them.”