FanHouse Ucla Basketball

Elie Seckbach, the Embedded Correspondent, brings his exclusive video reporting to FanHouse. Check back regularly for more videos.

UCLA's basketball team is always among the best college teams in the nation, but this year's team will have many new faces. In this FanHouse exclusive we talk to some of the new recruits and also hear from the Wizard of Westwood, former Bruins head coach John Wooden.

Check out the video after the jump.

Drew Gordon, expected to play a major role for the UCLA basketball team this season, suffered a partially torn patellar tendon at the 2009 USA Basketball U19 World Championship Team Trials in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Gordon, a sophomore from San Jose, Calif., is expected to return to Los Angeles for further examination to determine the extent of the tear. Gordon could miss up to six months, meaning he likely wouldn't return to the Bruins until Pac-10 play begins. The 6-foot-8 forward averaged 3.6 points and 3.4 rebounds as a freshman.

The upheaval at USC and constant defections at UCLA may have sent conference supremacy north.

The NBA draft's early entries have one month to return to school (June 15), but it doesn't appear any of the Pac-10 entries are coming back. Six underclassmen -- USC's DeMar DeRozan and Taj Gibson, UCLA's Jrue Holiday, the Arizona duo of Jordan Hill and Chase Budinger and Arizona State's James Harden -- will participate in the draft combine beginning May 28 in Chicago, and none are likely to return to their schools. Even Holiday, a projected late first-rounder, is reportedly close to hiring an agent and remaining in the draft.

Monday, UCLA officials revealed their plans to refurbish the storied Pauley Pavilion. There will be 1,000 more seats, a new floor, a high-definition video scoreboard and upgrades to every facility in the building. As for the aesthetic beauty of the outside? It's gonna be something, if it ends up anything close to the art they've produced.

Aside from the hefty price tag, one thing many people in the area may find a bit troublesome, though, is the fallout when it comes to seating. Considering the massive fund-raising effort being done to foot the bill, long-time season tickets holders and students may be seated behind donors of the renovated arena.

Stanford has ruled the Pac-10 Women's basketball landscape for the past 20 years, and California and Arizona State have recently emerged to make the conference a three-team scramble for supremacy. But two recent hires by Oregon and USC have made it apparent that women's basketball is indeed becoming a higher priority on the West Coast.

On a night when the University of Arizona honored famed coach Lute Olson during halftime, something became very clear as the ceremonial speeches ended and the basketball began. If the Wildcats want to continue their NCAA streak of 25 consecutive tournament appearances, they would need more than an uplifting video (it got dusty in my apartment) and the memory of a coach that has been through a lot the last two years. The Wildcats need a W.

It wasn't happening, as Jerome Randle absolutely murdered the 'Cats in the second half, helping California (22-8, 11-6) improve to third in the Pac-10 with the 83-77 win and put the Wildcats in another uncomfortable position similar to last season -- leaving their March Madness dreams up to chance.

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.

Digger Phelps is one of ESPN's most colorful characters. I mean that literally, too. The guy matches his highlighters to his ties. Which, all ridiculousness aside, seems like it would be really difficult to manage in terms of a long-term dress code. Well, Digger only added to his colorful notoriety Saturday night, when he got down with some Cal cheerleaders during a timeout. On the bright side, at least he wasn't talking about Notre Dame. Via Bruins Nation.

Ben Howland has sent a lot of players into the NBA and he's going to do it this year too. Howland is going to send freshman Jrue Holiday to the Association, but not in the manner that he likely expected.

Howland had Kevin Love last season as a one-and-done freshman. Holiday could be looking for similar results, but he's taking an entirely different path. Love left school after leading the Bruins to a third consecutive Final Four appearance. Holiday might do it as a cheerleader.

Holiday spent the second-half of Saturday's loss to Washington State on the bench. And Howland told the Los Angeles Times that Holiday should get pretty comfortable as Malcolm Lee will likely see increased playing time. Howland even called Lee the team's best defensive wing right now.

There is no team in the major conferences that plays a slower tempo than Washington State. Heck, there is only one team nationally that plays a slower tempo than the Cougars. UCLA has been experimenting with playing faster, despite coach Ben Howland's general tendencies, and up until recently it had been effective.

As much as anything, though, the speed advantage isn't everything; the UCLA defense still had to do enough. That came to a crashing thud against Washington State. UCLA did force the Cougars to play at a much faster tempo than they are comfortable, but Washington State came away with a 82-81 win at Pauley Pavilion.