A Tale of Two Basketball Programs

I attended UCLA as an undergraduate during some lean times for the basketball program. I have to say it didn't get as bad as it did last year. I attended UC Irvine for graduate school and the team more or less did nothing. The biggest news would be upsetting UNLV but that was it. I think one year the team lost 20 games.

Well, this year's Bruins aren't expected to do much. Getting to the NCAA would exceed expectations. An NIT bid is possible and probably would be accepted by the team if offered. The high water mark so far was the win over Michigan State on the day the court was dedicated to Nell and John Wooden. The other was the good effort against Kentucky. Victories over Vermont, Riverside and LMU were not very impressive but they got the W which is something they didn't do much of last year. UCLA plays 18 Pac10 games and if they can finish 10-8 in conference, people will be hailing Howland as a genius.

The Anteaters got in some good games in pre-season. Mid-major programs stuggle to get good teams to play them in the pre-conference schedule. They got to play Pac10 teams (Stanford and California) which is a good test for the Eaters even though they lost those two games. They got two nice wins against Princeton and Pepperdine which are notible teams that aren't in a power conference (Pac10, SEC, Big10, Big12, Big East, ACC). Utah State and UCSB are the strong teams in the Big West Conference. A 12-6 record in the Big West would be realistic for the Zots.