After reading the articles described in my previous post, some thoughts on the "inconsistency" of this team. There is no doubt that we have have been inconsistent this year (as demonstrated by the way we fell behind by double digits on several occasions only to come back and win, as well as playing competitively with Stanford and Arizona for portions of games, only to give up huge runs that eventually lead to double digit losses). However, this inconsistency is no mystery: it comes from depending on perimeter shots for offense, relying on freshman to play major roles for us, and having very little depth. All of these factors result in having long scoring droughts, especially when we are forced to play a half-court game on offense. In the years to come, with some added inside presence and experience, we will be able to execute more consistently, meaning fewer long stretches of little or no scoring. And added depth hopefully will translate to more aggressive defense, allowing us to get out and run and get some easy scoring chances.

Finally, despite this inconsistency within games, our overall results have been remarkably consistent in the sense that we have won very few games that we would be expected to lose, and we have lost very few games that we would be expected to win (the first Cal game being the only glaringly bad loss of the year). I see this as a sign that we are playing close to our full capability game in and game out, which obviously has not been characteristic of recent UCLA teams. It's good to see, although an unexpected win every now and then would be nice. :)