He may have just arrived in Westwood, but the Bruins miss him already.
Starting freshman forward Trevor Ariza did not play in the Bruins’ one-point victory over Vermont on Saturday night after being diagnosed with spontaneous pneumothorax this past Friday.
“You can’t stop it, you can’t prevent it, it just happens,” Ariza said regarding his condition.
Nicknamed SP in the medical community, spontaneous pneumothorax occurs when air collects inside the chest region but outside the lung, causing the lung to collapse without apparent trauma. SP occurs most commonly in athletic males, between 17 and 25 years of age, who are tall and thin.
Ariza first noticed pain during Thanksgiving Day practice and was examined at the UCLA Medical Center on Friday. He will miss at least the next four games to ensure adequate recovery.
Saturday night, Ariza watched the game in jeans and a T-shirt instead of his Bruin uniform, alongside similarly dressed senior forward T.J. Cummings, who is academically ineligible for the remainder of the fall academic quarter.
“It was very difficult to watch,” Ariza said. “I can’t wait to get back to where I left off.”
With Ariza and Cummings unable to play, the only remaining forwards on the Bruin roster are juniors Dijon Thompson and Josiah Johnson. Thompson, who started the last two games with Ariza and finished last year as the team’s leading scorer, ended the night with 18 points and nine rebounds. But Johnson, who started in place of Ariza, struggled to match up to the freshman’s 17-point, 12-rebound performance against EA Sports All-Stars or his 16-point, seven-rebound game against the Southern California All-Stars during the exhibition season.
“We have to pick up without Trevor in rebounding,” Thompson said.
Johnson struggled not only in that respect, but also on the defensive end of play. The night didn’t begin any easier for him with what started as a man-to-man scheme, which found him guarding Vermont’s Taylor Coppenrath, who finished his night in Pauley Pavilion with a career-tying high of 38 points.
“The minutes Josiah played he did some good things, he rebounded well,” Ariza said. “He tried to contain their big guy, but I can’t really say if it was a fair match-up.”
Going into the second half, keeping Coppenrath at bay was key if the Bruins wanted to end the night with a win, so Howland started sophomore center Ryan Hollins instead of Johnson at forward alongside Thompson.
The dynamic of having both Hollins and fellow center Michael Fey on the court at the same time, however, was a situation which the Bruins were not accustomed to, and the team clearly missed the presence of Ariza.
“You could see we were a little confused out there,” Howland said. “If we get T.J. and Trevor back and we can keep those guys healthy, we can really be a team better than what people are expecting out of UCLA this year.”