Originally posted by Mr. Boston89
UCLA lost big time when Evan Burns couldnt not qualify for school and did qualify at SDSU.. Makes yout think.. A basketball player actualy not qualifing for college? Never happenes anywhere to big time recruits like this. I am a fan of UCLA doing the right thing and not letting him "slide" into school, unlike the Dookies from Cameron. The avg GPA of incoming forsh at Duke is something like 3.8 and the basketball team is around 2.4... Now comon...
UCLA has the talent to compete next year, without a doubt... The more pac-10 schools in the NCAA tourney the more we prove those dirty east coast writers wrong..
The problem with Burns was pretty simple, UCLA can't take partial qualifiers and Burns' core classes in HS were in dispute so the admissions wouldn't let him in until it was cleared up. Ultimately they decided they didn't want to wait and dismissed him. San Diego State took him as a partial and when the core classes were cleared, he began to play. Agree that really hurt the team but the impact will be felt more NEXT year with Kapono gone than it was this year with Kapono around. Burns would have been playing out of position this year at PF.
Arizona is loaded I know all about Shakur and Ebi I watched the McDonald's game last week both were impressive. Adams and Iguodala, looks like Chris Rodgers is a likely transfer out of UA because of lack of PT. I figure it will take 2 years for UCLA to get the recruiting back in line.
Stanford could challenge UA this coming season, Chris Hernandez should be back healthy at the PG and I think people will be pleasantly surprised at the progress of guys like Grunfeld and Haryasz(an ARizona kid) in the near future both were highly recruited guys who showed flashes of being really good.
I'm thrilled for UCLA last year a SJ Mercury News writer, Tim Kawakami, wrote an article where he claimed all the talk about Pitino or Majerus to UCLA was scaring Pac10 coaches but the guy they ought to "fear" is Ben Howland who will wind up the next coach. Kawakami covered UCLA for years with the LA Times so I emailed him and asked if it was opinion or he had sources and he kind of hinted he had it on pretty good authority they'd already settled on Howland as their choice for the job. I emailed him yesterday congratulating him on his prediction and he joked about waiting for the official announcement in case Howland changes his mind(please no).
UCLA will be no better than 3rd next year and maybe not even that high since ASU and Cal could both be quite good, but at least I know they'll be well coached.
