Sam Donnellon: Collison, Shipp keep UCLA afloat
DARREN COLLISON and Josh Shipp are old for college basketball players; they have started next to each other for the last three seasons. That alone makes UCLA's backcourt tandem a rarity, but so does this:
DARREN COLLISON and Josh Shipp are old for college basketball players; they have started next to each other for the last three seasons. That alone makes UCLA's backcourt tandem a rarity, but so does this:
In those three seasons, they have reached the Final Four three times.
They have won as underdogs and won as favorites and enter tonight's first-round matchup against 11th-seeded Virginia Commonwealth University with a gaudy 13-3 record in NCAA tournament play.
"A lot of players," said Shipp before practice yesterday, "they don't even make the tournament."
Which makes this last part perhaps the most startling of all:
A lot of people are picking the sixth-seeded Bruins to lose tonight.
"That's fine," Collison said. "That's something we're going to use as motivation."
It's an odd-sounding use of the word, given the track record, given the name on the jersey.
Motivation?
UCLA?
They are motivation providers this time of year, not collectors.
But their 3,000-mile trek here is already very un-Bruin-like. They were a 1 or 2 seed when they reached those Final Fours, ruled the Pac-10 those years, too. They finished second in their conference at 13-5 this year, were 25-8 overall, and all but a handful of their games were decided by the smallest of margins.
A listless loss to Southern Cal in the Pac-10 Tournament dropped their seeding, and precipitated their trek here.
Said Shipp, "We've had a few mishaps."
Collison and Shipp have been there, done that, as has senior center Alfred Aboya. But five of the remaining scholarships belong to freshmen, and the end product has been an uneven one. UCLA won four straight against good opposition in early February, then lost three of their next four. They have confounded their fans, themselves, even their been-there-done-that coach at times. Yesterday coach Ben Howland spoke of how the "younger players have really developed nicely as this year's progressed," and at one point this season lauded them as "one of the best teams in the country." But just a few weeks later, after his squad lost to Arizona State, Arizona and Washington State over a period of 9 days, he spoke of the need for a "gut check," and seemed as confounded as anyone when a five-game winning streak ended with a 65-55 loss to USC in the Pac-10 Tournament.
"It has been difficult at times for us this year," Shipp said. "A lot of older guys, I think we just expect and are used to players just knowing how to play the game, and buying into our system right away . . . But at times we forget that we need to teach the younger guys. I think we do take that for granted sometimes."
VCU is no more experienced. Two sophomores and a freshman start, and the roster is brimming with underclassmen. Their 24-9 record does not contain a win over a ranked team. But there are a couple of exceptional players involved.
And there is this: As an 11th seed 2 years ago, the Rams knocked off Duke in the first round and took Pitt into overtime.
The star that year, Eric Maynor, is the star this year.
The difference is that he is older, wiser and arguably more tournament lethal. He scored 25 points and had eight assists in the Rams' 71-50 rout of George Mason in the CAA Tournament championship and is projected by many as a first-round NBA pick.
So is Collison. But Collison is recovering from a bruised tailbone that affected him down the stretch and in the USC loss. Yesterday he said, "It's feeling a lot better than it was prior to the USC game," but there still seemed to be lingering doubt as to whether it can hold up through the weekend, especially if he spends much time dealing with Maynor.
That alone could get in the way of an improbable run at a fourth consecutive Final Four berth. The uneven roster, a region that includes Duke, Pitt, Florida State and of course, their likely second-round opponent, Villanova - it all adds up to Collison and Shipp watching this year's Final Four the same way the 60 teams left in their wake have in each of the last 3 years.
On a television.
"For us, it doesn't really matter what people think of us," Shipp said. "We believe in each other. We know what we each are capable of, what this team is capable of. For us, that's all that really matters." *
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