Plaschke has as much insight on UCLA as I do on Stanford women's basketball, none. The reason Love was yelling at Howland was he was being double teamed all over the court as Dozier ignored Luc and sucked down onto Love. And Luc sat out there shooting jumpers I think he was 1-6 in the first half the first bucket being a layup where Love was doubled and Westbrook found Luc wide open(he still made it into a tough shot).
Howland who's usually pretty protective of his players even said it in the postgame he was asked why Love didn't touch the ball more in the 2nd half and his answer was "because they weren't guarding our power forward they were doubling Kevin." That was so frustrating to watch Luc wound up 5-13 completely unguarded teh whole game. He finally figured it out and went to the offensive glass but too late, Keefe in his limited minutes figured out immediately what was going on, so did Aboya, but Luc who's been seeing that defense all year kept on shooting jumpers the first 30 minutes.
AS for the UCLA needs to get more athletic, gee Plaschke do you think that's why they signed Jrue Holiday, Malcolm Lee, Jerime Anderson and Drew Gordon all of whom are more athletic than most of the guys on the current roster?
The problem next year is size they lose Mata-Real, Love, DC, possibly Westbrook and I think Luc probably files for the draft(he's wanted 2 the last 2 years but was hurt both times). So they'll be much smaller but more athletic. If Westbrook decides to stay one more year they'll be exceptionally athletic in the guards. Gordon is a terrific athlete but very unpolished as a 5/4, not even close to Love as a post.
Memphis was just much better there were adjustments Ben could have made such as admitting early that Collison couldn't guard Rose, but in the end he was running a relay race where no matter what order he put his 4 guys, they were slower than the other team. THe key to the game was supposed to be limiting fastbreaks, Memphis over and over got easy buckets in transition off UCLA turnovers or bad shots. Westbrook for all the good things he did he also had 3 turnovers that led directly to layups and forced several drives that got blocked into fastbreaks. Collison was brutal 2 points 5 turnovers 5 fouls. UCLA's guards got dominated and last time I checked UCLA's guards are more athletic than their bigs.
UCLA lost because they couldn't score in the last 6-7 minutes, they couldn't stop Memphis from scoring, and the shoot 3's and foul strategy turned a 7 point hole into a 15 point hole as UCLA missed 3's and Memphis made the FT's.
UCLA is 13-3 in the last 3 years under Howland in the tourney, 2 losses to Florida a team that started 3 lottery picks, one this year to a team that started 2 lottery picks. The problem is if Howland does what Plaschke suggests and starts recruiting more big scorers, he won't be able to get them to play great defense. He picks players to fit his system, he just needs to find a better balance where he has enough shooters and offense to avoid the lengthy droughts they had all year.
We'll see when the dust settles, if Westbrook comes back UCLA is still likely the favorite to win the conference next year, Jrue Holiday is already a better player than Westbrook put those 2 together and they'll be terrific, they just gotta find someone to play inside next year.