BRIDGET O’BRIEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Playing time is at a
premium as freshmen (from left) Ryan Walcott, Dijon
Thompson and Andre Patterson pay their
dues on the bench.
By Dylan Hernandez
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
If you’re Steve Lavin, how do you properly distribute
minutes so that all 10 players in your rotation get enough playing
time?
You don’t.
After nearly a full season of coaching a team that has more
playable players than any of his previous squads, Lavin is now
certain of what he expected at the beginning of the year: that he
can’t give everyone as much time on the floor as he would
like.
It was, at first, not viewed as a problem.
The upside of having such a huge rotation was supposed to be
that UCLA would be able to constantly apply defensive pressure
throughout a game, since fatigue would not be a concern. But that
idea was quickly abandoned when Lavin found his team too slow to
press.
And soon, what was perceived to be a benefit turned into a
problem.
With the press idea abandoned, the team’s starters ate up
significant portions of the available minutes.
That, naturally, meant that the Bruins’ younger players
were subjected to longer stints on the bench, leading to a loss of
confidence on their part.
Sophomore forward/center T.J. Cummings, who frequently made
ill-advised decisions on offense, saw his minutes decrease.
Some of freshman point guard Cedric Bozeman’s playing time
was given to senior Rico Hines, delaying his progress.
Ryan Walcott, Dijon Thompson and Andre Patterson were on the
floor less as well.
“The best experience is trial and error,” Lavin said
at the time, although he acknowledged he couldn’t get the
youngsters the number of minutes he wanted.
The youngsters admitted that because their playing time had been
cut, they tried to do too much when they were on the court.
The result?
More bad shots, more turnovers.
At that point, the team’s veterans, who, too, had been
glued to the bench earlier in their careers, took it upon
themselves to console the youngsters.
“We have so many points of reference on this team,”
Lavin said. “Billy (Knight) and Matt (Barnes) took steps back
earlier in their career. They’re like older siblings for the
younger guys on our team.”
Barnes, in particular, was vital in restoring Cummings’
confidence.
“I told him to keep his head in there,” Barnes said
of Cummings. “He’s a great scorer, a great rebounder.
When he gets nervous, he forces things. I talked to him the whole
way home from (the Arizona trip in mid-January).”
Barnes told Cummings to play within himself, not try to do what
wasn’t asked of him.
“A lot of guys have to try to figure out their roles
here,” said Cummings, who has been forcing less shots
recently and has become a better defender.
“Where I came from, I was the go-to guy. It makes you a
better player, though.”
The freshmen, similarly, have become more comfortable with
scoring less and scrapping more.
“I just got a lot of confidence now,” Patterson
said. “The newcomers used to be scared to do things. We broke
out of our shells.”
So these days, Lavin has been preoccupied with finding the right
alignment of players instead of worrying about the freshmen and
sophomores loss of confidence.
“You’re trying to look for combinations to bring
spark and energy,” Lavin said. “I think one advantage
that we have is that we can play any combination of five players at
a time.”