From Press Row

I was going to blog angrily last night, but patience got the better of me. First off, I watched the game here on the East Coast, where it's been hovering at or below freezing temperatures since I got here the first week of January.

Since then, I've learned a few things:

1. Snow isn't so fun when you have to deal with it all the time

2. Icy sidewalks really are no joke

3. Wind chill really is a factor (it makes a 25-degree day feel like 0 ... not fun)

4. UCLA basketball is better than 99% of the country

Last night, however, UCLA played like that other 99%. I'll get to that later. Spending all this time on the East Coast getting force-fed how great the Big East and ACC are, I've learned just how good the Pac-10 really is.

The talking heads like to talk about how many more good teams reside in the Big East, ACC, Big 12, SEC and even the Big 10. Well, if they knew basic math there probably should be more good teams, since there are many more teams than the Pac-10 has (even the Big 10 has 11 teams because apparently they don't count in the Midwest).

The Big East and ACC are athletic monstrosities at this point, with so many teams, coaches and players that they should apply for statehood. Who in Pac-10 country doesn't think that, despite how bad Oregon St. and ASU are this season, that they wouldn't beat the dregs of these other conferences?

The "big" boys:

Penn St., Minnesota and Northwestern from the Big (don't call us 11) 10? They’re programs in disarray with no hope in sight. Minnesota themselves are salivating at the thought of prying away Wazzu's Tony Bennet to fix their sorry program.

The ACC, granted, doesn't really have any stinkers like the Big 10, but is there really a truly elite team in the bunch? North Carolina is obviously the most talented and has the most potential, but they're clearly prone to huge lapses due to their youth. NC St. has lost 15 games and has still beaten UNC and Duke. Where are all the great teams there? Only UNC qualifies (but they are hardly a juggernaut).

The SEC has an entire division (West) that won't make the NCAA Tournament. No further comment necessary.

The Big East has become the poster child for the oversized super-conference, sporting 16 teams that compete in basketball. When they trumpet themselves, saying they're setting all kinds of records, sending eight or nine teams to the NCAAs, it's not all that impressive when you consider how many teams are in the league. The Big East has a shot at having eight teams earn bids. Georgetown, Pitt, Louisville, Notre Dame, Marquette, Villanova and Syracuse are likely in. West Virginia is probably squarely on the bubble. That's still only half their league membership, equivalent to the Pac-10 getting five tournament bids. Does that make the Big East any more impressive? I say no. South Florida, Rutgers and Cincinnati probably wouldn't finish anywhere near the top half of decent mid-major conferences like the Missouri Valley, WAC or Mountain West.

Not to mention their schedules:

One other key point to remember when judging other "power" conferences besides the Pac-10 is that, because of the larger membership, teams play unbalanced schedules. This is key when judging their tournament resumes when you consider teams can play a vastly more difficult schedule than even another team from their own conference.

For example, Michigan St. has faced a much tougher league slate than potential No. 1-seed Ohio St. Both teams have faced each team in the league once, while playing Michigan, Wisconsin and each other twice. The difference lies in the extra three games that still remain. The Spartans have faced off with extra games against Iowa, Indiana and Illinois. Those three teams have a winning percentage of .648 (59-32). Ohio St. on its schedule has Purdue, Penn St. and Northwestern, whose winning percentage is .484 (44-47). I'd say that makes a huge difference. Indiana and Illinois will probably be tournament teams while Iowa was at least on the bubble. Purdue is probably equivalent to playing Iowa, but Penn St. and Northwestern are the two worst teams in the Big 10.

Back to the Pac-10

My main point in all of this is going back to my belief that the Pac-10 is a much better conference overall than most of the media believes. It is the only "BCS" conference that plays a complete schedule with teams facing off in a round-robin format with both home and away matchups. The league plays Thursday-Saturdays (sometimes Sundays for TV) and this travel schedule, along with a travel partner, makes road trips much more difficult.

Also, the coaching in the Pac-10 is better than perhaps it ever has been. The track records of Lute Olson (Arizona) and Ben Howland (UCLA) speak for themsevles. Tim Floyd (USC) is bringing in talent and has his Trojans playing tough defense. Ernie Kent (Oregon) has taken the Ducks to the Tournament three times, once making the Elite Eight (2002). Lorenzo Romar (Washington) guided his team two years ago to a No. 1 seed. Even ASU's Herb Sendek was named Coach of the Year in both the MAC and ACC. He'll have the Sun Devils in the top half of the conference as early as next season. Tony Bennet (WSU) is the easy choice for national Coach of the Year honors for what he’s done for the Cougs. The Pac-10 has great coaching up and down the league and makes it a premier basketball conference.

OK, enough about all that. On to yesterday’s game.

What happened against Cal?

As I’m sure you know (if you’ve managed to actually get this far in the entry) UCLA lost to Cal in overtime, 76-69. That’s two straight losses for the Bruins to two of the worse teams in the Pac-10.

The games are worrisome on several levels.

1. The defense has not been up to the recent standards that Howland has brought to UCLA. It seems that when our offense this season is not humming it is because the defensive intensity is not there to generate turnovers and scoring chances in transition. Last season the defense was there every game. You could always count on the grinding, in-your-face style of defense for 40 minutes. Last night, it was only there during the comeback coming out of halftime, but the intensity seemed to disappear after we had caught Cal, as well as during overtime. I don’t know if that was because of fatigue or complacency, but something needs to change to keep the defensive effort up for an entire game.

2. Arron Afflalo chose the worst possible time to have the worst game of his UCLA career. Having just been named Pac-10 Player of the Year and to several All-American teams, Afflalo perhaps finished out his Pac-10 playing days without so much as a whimper. He shot only 4-14 against Washington, and followed that up by shooting 1-7 from the field and only 1-4 from the free-throw line. He didn’t score a field goal in regulation, and his trademark defense was not there as Cal’s Ayinde Ubaka torched the Bruins for 29 points.

3. Free-throw shooting remains a huge question mark for UCLA. It’s too late in the season for this to change. When you watch this team now, you just hope that whoever is at the line makes it, whoever it is. Afflalo and Collison both missed critical free throws late in the game, as did Luc Richard Mbah a Moute. Earlier in the season you only worried if Aboya or Mata were shooting. Now it seems nobody can be trusted with a pressure free throw. The team missed 14 times from the charity stripe (15-29 overall, 51.7%). They shoot almost 65% as a team for the season. If they shot that well last night, its an extra four points.

I think the defensive effort will be changed this week in practice by the coaching staff. And Arron has too much pride and is too good a player to continue playing this poorly. I expect him to bounce back. The free-throw shooting isn’t going to get any better at this point, and it’s just kind of hope-and-pray at this point.

The one thing that really troubles me, though, is Darren Collison. His play recently has not lived up to the hype he has been receiving the media. His shooting stroke seems to have abandoned him, and while he’s still making plays both for himself and for his teammates, his decision-making has become very poor. He had seven turnovers against Cal, many of them from bad passes and mental mistakes.

Collison is trying to force things, and while his 20 points brought UCLA back into the game, he made too many turnovers at inopportune times. And even though he’s our best 3-point shooter statistically, it’s because he’s been judicious in taking them all season. Most of the season, he’s been taking open 3s in rhythm and consistently burying them. Now he’s fallen in love with the shot, which is not his strength. He took 10 of them yesterday, easily his career high. Previously, his high was seven against Arizona and Arizona St. three weeks ago.

He’s fallen so much in love with the 3 that he decided to take one at the end of regulation last night with the score tied. The Bruins had shot 22 free throws in the second half, and Cal was just grabbing and hacking anybody that tried to get into the lane. The final play was seemingly obvious to everyone but Collison: Clear out, run down the clock, and drive the lane going for a shot or get to the line. Collison’s greatest strength is his incredible quickness. Nobody in the Pac-10 has a chance of staying in front of him consistently. There was plenty of time for him to drive the lane and get to the bucket, and at the very least give Luc and Mata a chance for a tip-in.

Instead, he ran a high ball screen with Mata and took a 23-foot 3 that obviously didn’t fall.

UCLA can get out of this end-of-season funk quickly if Collison goes back to how he played even three or four weeks ago. He needs to play within himself, remember his strengths, and start breaking people down off the dribble and creating for everybody else.

Looking ahead

The main concern for many fans will be what effect these two losses have on UCLA’s NCAA seeding. Before the game I thought the Bruins were a lock for a No. 1 seed, and that they would get the No. 1 overall if they won the conference tournament. I still think UCLA will get a No. 1 seed, but at best it will be the fourth seed overall, and that is no guarantee. The Bruins could easily be bumped down to a No. 2.

As of right now, I predict the No. 1s in this order: Big Ten champion (OSU or Wisconsin), Kansas, Florida, UCLA. It’s still possible the Big Ten gets two No. 1 seeds or UNC could grab the last spot.

With the worse seeding, UCLA’s road to the Final Four has become much tougher than it had to be. The difference between playing the worst No. 2 seed in the Elite Eight or playing the best No. 2 might be the difference between facing, say, a UNC or a Georgetown or Memphis. This change in difficulty goes back every round now for UCLA. The selection committee, though, protects the top four seed lines, so worries about UCLA getting sent to any regional besides the West should be dispelled.

This same scenario played out last season, as Memphis was the No. 1 seed in the West and had to face UCLA in Oakland, clearly a “home advantage” for the Bruins. If, say, Wisconsin, UNC or Kansas got shipped to the West, UCLA would still likely be the No. 2 in the region. That, thankfully, likely hasn’t changed.

So the Bruins still have a shot to make it deep into the Tournament. The main repercussions from last night’s loss is that the Bruins will now receive a seed lower than they were expecting, but it's not the end of the world. They must not worry about their potential seeding and instead focus on improving their inconsistent play. They need to play with passion every night, or as evidenced by the Washington and Cal games, they’re going to get beat. I think they’ll respond very positively and still make a run into the Elite Eight/Final Four.