One Fan's UCLA Basketball Blog
News, analysis, and commentary about the UCLA Bruins basketball program
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
 
Another national perspective on next year
Yesterday, I linked to looks at next year from Andy Katz and Luke Winn. Here is Gregg Doyel's top 25 for 2005-2006. He has a much more realistic outlook for the Bruins: we're ranked #24 with Arizona, Washington, and Stanford all ahead of us (in that order). His comments on the Bruins:
"Back-to-back recruiting bonanzas will continue Ben Howland's ahead-of-schedule rebuilding job of the Bruins, who return every key player but Dijon Thompson -- and also will get back Cedric Bozeman, a three-year starter who redshirted this season with a knee injury."
Incidentally, these three writers each have a different #1: Winn chooses Duke, Katz picks UConn, and Doyel selects Oklahoma (yes, that's right, Oklahoma).
Comments:
I would put them somewhere between Doyel and Katz. Probably around 18 or so. I imagine that there will be a fair amount of improvement in the three freshmen starters. The big questions are 1) what impact will next year's freshmen have, and 2) will Fey and Hollins learn to catch? They have a lot of upside, though. If the answer to 1) is "a lot", and if the answer to 2) is "yes", then they could get all the way up to #10.

They need to put Fey and Hollins through those receiver drills where they fire tennis ball at them at about 80 MPH.
 
Lunardi has a new bracketology out for next season. He has UCLA as a 3 seed, Washington as 4, Arizona a 5, Stanford a 7, and Oregon an 11. Pretty optimistic. I'd probably drop the Bruins to the five, and move U of A and UW up one seed.
 
William, thanks for the info. I'm really surprised that people think we're going to win the Pac-10 next year and/or be the highest-seeded Pac-10 team. I agree with you and others that Arizona and Washington will be stronger than us, plus remember Frank Burlison picked Stanford to win the conference. I think we will be very lucky to finish in the top 3 of the conference.
 
I don't that they'll be lucky to do so. I think it's a realistic expectation to have, but it's certainly not my expectation. They're so young that they're really hard to guage.

If everyone sticks around, though, I can see them being as good in two years as Illinois was this year. Not necessarily 37-2 (which is fluky), but NC contender. I think they line up similar. Two guards and a small forward that will all have started for three straight years (assuming Shipp keeps his job). Bruins would be deeper by then than Illinois was this year, too.
 
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