FanHouse UCLA

Each week, ESPN's Joe Lunardi predicts the NCAA tournament field if the season ended today. While he's good at this, Lunardi only focuses on past performance, and wins and losses. Bracketology Busters looks at which teams should be expected to perform significantly better or worse than their projected seeds.

This week we'll look at a team that's seen their perception drop after a great three-year stretch, but is primed to make yet another late season run.

Since joining the Bowl Championship Series system, the Pac Ten has been the perennial odd-man out, and history repeated itself again as the Kansas Jayhawks were selected to play in the Orange Bowl, leaving Arizona State as the off-man out.

Pac Ten Commissioner Tom Hansen is likely not amused--but nor should be be surprised. The BCS has a history of giving the conference the short end of the stick.

In 2001, the Oregon Ducks were jumped over by a Nebraska team that lost its final game and left out of the Rose Bowl. Two years later, USC was ranked #1 in both human polls, but left out of the Title Game. A year later, Mack Brown lobbied enough pollsters to jump Cal for the final automatic qualifying spot and a Rose Bowl berth, and in 2005, Oregon missed an automatic BCS berth by one slot.

UCLA center Lorenzo Mata is a fine player. He rebounds, he blocks shots, he takes charges, and he's actually not a bad offensive player, even though he's usually overshadowed by the Bruins' other four starters. But there's one area where he's horrible. And I mean really, really horrible: He's about the worst free throw shooter you'll ever see.

How bad is he? His free throw percentage this year is 37.2%. For sake of comparison, check out Shaq's NBA career numbers: He's never had a season below 46%.

So allow me to suggest a simple solution for Mata: Start shooting free throws underhanded, also known as the granny shot. It worked like a charm for Rick Barry and many other players in the sport's early days, and I think the fact that no active players do it has more to do with thinking it looks silly than with thinking it's ineffective. This article argues that from a physics perspective, the underhand shot creates an arc on the ball that makes it more likely to go into the basket. What could it hurt? When you're barely making a third of your free throws, you've got to try something different.

I don't think there's any better indication of what a phenomenal basketball history UCLA has than this: The Bruins won the Pac-10 regular season title this year and are in the Final Four, but if they don't win two more games, they won't be hanging a banner at Pauley Pavilion next year.

The Bruins have 11 banners hanging in their home gym, representing each of the school's 11 national championships (they won 10 from 1964 to 1975, and again in 1995). That's it -- nothing from the Final Fours they reached in other years.

And I think that's great. Players who go to UCLA understand that that's exactly what the standards are: Nothing short of a national title is worth celebrating. They're two wins away from a celebration.

The Scene: USC has nine points late in the fourth quarter of its annual crosstown grudge match against UCLA. Nine! This is a problem because UCLA's managed to put up 13 and if the Trojans don't score a touchdown on this very drive, their shot at Ohio State in the national championship game is going to go up in smoke.

No matter. This is what championship teams do [/jockspeak]. The USC offensive line, run around all day by Bruin defensive ends, solidifies. Booty looks smooth for the first time since USC's first drive of the second half; USC finds itself well into Bruin territory, facing a third and four at the UCLA 18.

The Event: Booty drops back and sees Steve Smith on a circle route that looks just open enough. He throws. Scrub linebacker Eric McNeil, is blitzing, but sees the three-step drop and aborts his pass rush. As the ball gets to him he leaps and deflects the ball. Fourth and fo-- he caught it! He wheeled around, located the ball, and caught it! Game over!

The Video:



The Aftermath: UCLA takes a series of knees to end the game, celebrates like mad, and proceeds to cough up an ugly loss to Florida State. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation is immediately sent into chaos: Florida? Michigan? Boise... no, not Boise. A shameful campaign from CBS' Gary Danielson sees the next day's controversial vote go to Florida, which is really horribly unjust until Michigan and Ohio State are both blown out in their bowl games.

Eric McNeil's incredible interception, for throwing the BCS into chaos, for definitely changing the national champion, and for generally being an awesome play to give the underdog a win in a major rivalry game, you are the #3 moment of the 2006 college football season.

No Utah fan could chant "over-rated" when the UCLA Bruins took the field at the Rose Bowl on Saturday. That is because the lowly UCLA Bruins didn't receive one vote in the preseason AP poll.

But their relative anonymity did not destroy the Bruins' confidence and may have inspired these new-look Sons of Westwood to a 31-10 win over the Utes. "Yay. We're not as bad as everyone thinks," could have been the collective cheer in the Arroyo Seco.

Perhaps the best news of all for UCLA was that 23 year old quarterback Ben Olson whose last meaningful snap in a football game came when George Bush's approval ratings were over 80 percent, is "all that," and a bag of chips. The hype didn't lie in this case.

Defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker knows that the UCLA Bruins are going to count on his unit to make up for the team's offensive shortcomings.

But if that doesn't happen, Walker cannot say he wasn't warned. When he approached USC Coach Pete Carroll before taking the job, the Trojan warned Walker that the Bruins' defense was "soft" and needed a major upgrade before being worthy of Walker's skills.

Had the Trojan Marching Band been asked about the UCLA "D", they would have played "Tusk"--the Fleetwood Mac song whose revised lyrics chant, "U - C - L - A Sucks!"

But while the Band's lyrics can be shunned as simply a matter of opinion, Carroll has the facts to back up the smack talk. The last two seasons, the Bruin defense ranked 106 and 113 out of 117 NCAA Division 1-A teams...and playing Carroll'd offensively-minded Trojans each year didn't help those numbers a bit.

Despite boasting that the Bruins were deep in every position this year, UCLA head coach Karl Dorrell may want to go to the English Department to see what exactly "deep" means when it comes to the Bruins secondary.

With a rash of injuries depleting the Bruins corners and safeties, Dorrell had to move two linebackers to be scout team safeties as the Sons of Westwood prepare for their opening game against Utah.

The Bruins are optimistic that cornerback/nickel back Michael Norris will recover from his right knee injury in time for the Utah game, and if not, at least for the UCLA Pac ten opener against the mighty Washington Huskies.

But given the Bruins' track record last year, we have to wonder whether Dorrell should be focusing his attentions more on the run defense at this point.