Expert Opinions

Back again for another installment of Expert Opinions. For those just joining us, let me give you a quick run down. I like UCLA basketball. My expectations are insanely high for this season, however, my confidence is insanely low. To help me sleep at night, I spend typically two or three hours of every work day perusing the major sports sites to reinforce my high expectations. This leads to major disappointment. So one more time, below are my top 5 picks for biggest disses of UCLA basketball on the major sports web sites in the last few days. See the last couple entries here and here.

5. Andy Katz of ESPN.com handed
out some weekly awards after week 1 of college basketball concluded. Total mentions of UCLA - 1. Total mentions of Kevin "Could this be Love" Love - 1. This is unacceptable. Love has thus far averaged 23 and 10 (math done in my head, may not be correct) in three games. Katz instead opts for Michael Beasley for Player of the Week. Hey Andy, how many times did Beasley fire a 55 foot chest pass at 97 mph? Yeah...didn't think so. If Beasley was on the receiving end of a K-Love outlet pass I am quite certain that his wrists would snap like graham crackers.

4. Jay Bilas is at it again, this time dissing the Bruins of years past. In this piece, Bilas tries to come up with a college all star team if no players left for the NBA while they were still eligible to play in college. He calls it the all imagine team - I assume because after reading it you have to imagine that he is not a total douche. He lists a total of eight teams (40 players) and the lack of Bruins is a crime against bruanity (sorry about that). All in all, according to Bilas, a team that has gone to the final four the past two seasons has a total of two players in the top 40. Pshaw. Blow me Bilas, Blow me.

3. Two mentions in the Sports Illustrated style archive for 07-08. I might appreciate the mentions, if I wasn't so sure the entry was tongue in cheek. Hey Luke Winn, The flaming Mohawk is not something to be mocked. In fact, I think Westbrook's good start can be attributed in part to his avant garde style. When it comes to style, all innovators are initially feared. But where would we be without the Russel Westbrooks and Andy Warhols of the world? Then Winn has the huevos to insult the Yellow C on UCLA's home jerseys. I personally think that being the first NCAA team to 100 natty's is something to be proud of and celebrate, call me old fashioned.

2. Andrew Skwara is back and pissing me off again. In his latest mailbag he says a bunch more stupid crap. When asked for the best frontcourts in the nation he rightly selects UCLA as the best, but wrongly keeps talking. Observe -

"The Bruins don't have anyone as dominating as Tyler Hansbrough".

If he had replaced dominating with feminine he would be onto something. I mean, our worst player (Michael Roll) could dominate Hansbrough while wearing high heels.

Skwara is then asked why Bryce Taylor of Oregon was not in his preseason PAC-10 all conference team. Check out part of Skwara's answer -

"We would like to have included Love , too."

Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop right there. You didn't include Love. Not only did this douche leave Love off of his stupid list, he is stupid enough to remind everyone of this tremendous oversight. Almost makes me want to find this losers list to make sure it sucks. And for that matter, how easy is it to make this all PAC-10 list, anyway? Uh, the list is...UCLA. Done.

1. I had to bring in a forklift to get my jaw off the ground after reading this load of feces from Fox Sports writer, Greg Hicks. One must only read the title to know that Hicks is totally full of prunes - it reads, Bruins are good, but there are questions. You are right Greg, I do have some questions - like, "Will the Bruins lose a single game this year?" or "Will Greg Hicks finally admit that he likes boys?". After the title, things go from bad to worse as Hicks basically tries (and fails miserably) to insult our entire team.
On Love, he says,'I don't know that he's going to be "dominating."' I do - he is.
On Luc, he says, "Luc had a tendency to over-handle the ball as he tried to create plays off the dribble." No he didn't...liar.
On Josh Shipp, Hicks says, "At times last year Shipp would take the occasional bad shot." The only bad shot Shipp took last year was a body shot off of Regina Rogers.
On our boy DC, Greg says, "he does have a tendency to miss open teammates. It's not because he's being selfish, but rather due to a lack of vision." Collison has perfect vision - the only thing better than his vision is his speed. I take that back, they are tied.

It is obvious that this guy is having some trouble at home, maybe his wife left him or his son went gay, but one thing is for certain - he is way off on everything he says.


Well, that's it for the week, hopefully we finally get some respect and I can take next week off. Don't worry, folks, it'll never happen...

Expert Opinions

As I stated last week, I love browsing the major sports websites to reinforce my overinflated expectations of our basketball team this season. The problem is that lately I am finding commentary that is significantly less positive than my idiot brain is expecting. So once again, below are my top 5 picks for biggest disses of UCLA basketball on the major sports web sites in the last few days.

5. Andrew Skwara of rivals.com writes about the top ten impact freshman this season. First off, K-Love is number four. I have seen the fabled outlet pass, and I am sorry, I will not stand for anything less than number two (with Chace Stanback being number 1) and take a look at the teaser to the link on Yahoo! sports -

UCLA's Kevin Love is one of the precocious players.

It turns out this is actually a compliment , but most people don't know this and most people won't bother to click the link, so this counts as a mega-dis.



4. Jay Bilas has become one of the usual suspects in Expert Opinions as he refuses to recognize the greatness of our team. In his latest bruin bashing installment he fails to recognize K-Love's dominance:

UCLA's Kevin Love and Memphis' Rose will carry important loads but may not put up Kevin Durant numbers.

I wouldn't be so sure, because thus far K-Love has been a double-double machine. Bilas later predicts his point guard of the season. Although I appreciate the mention of my dog DC, the mention does not come without a caveat.

Could someone outplay Collison and take the mythical crown? Sure. Memphis' Rose is a better NBA prospect; some others are bigger; and still others shoot it better.

How about a taste of his own medicine? Jay Bilas is my pick for ESPN writer of the year. Could someone out-write him and take the mythical crown. They will. RL Stine can write better; others have a larger vocab; and many others write better. (Hurts doesn't it?)

And Bilas completely glosses over our boy Westbrook. I guess he missed that picture of Westbrook getting a domer from a Chico State slacker from Monday nights game.

3. Pat Forde is the next writer that has some splainin' to do. In this column on espn.com, he not only puts us at number three behind NC and Memphis, he also brings up the ending of our season last year - in a shitty way. Under the heading, "Five Teams Trying To Forget How Last Year Ended" - Forde puts us at number five on the list:

UCLA: Punked by Florida again.

Has Forde even watched MTV in the last 12 years? Doesn't he know that the meaning of the word punked has been radically altered for the better in that time frame? Was BJ Novak the starting PG for Florida the past two seasons? Didn't think so. Not sure what you call losing in the Final Four to the same team in consecutive years, but I know that punked no longer applies. Getting punked is when your agent pays Ashton Kutcher to play an increasingly lame, unquestionably fake, and needlessly elaborate joke on you to promote your upcoming crappy movie.
And uh, last time I checked back to back Final Four visits was not something to forget, dipshit.

2. Jon Wilner of Sporting News states his reasons for picking UCLA as preseason #1, but in so doing, sneaks a few insults into the mix. He starts his "case" for UCLA by pointing out that we had no chance the last two years:

Had UCLA played Florida 100 times, the Gators would have won 90 -- the skills sets, matchups and playing styles were overwhelmingly in their favor.

So, we are just one good team from another failure in the tournament? Is that it? I guess he technically does give us a 10% chance, which happens to be the same chance that I fail to sign him up for several impotency drug web site mailing lists. Wilner does not stop there, ending his piece with a harsh parting shot when he points out the "only thing" our squad is missing - a good player.

They're missing...an uber-athlete who operates on the wing, plays above the rim and can make something out of nothing. For all his skills, Afflalo was not a great one-on-one player -- that's why he lasted until late in the first round of the NBA Draft -- and neither is Shipp.

How dare you sir - A^2 is beyond reproach.

1. The main page on CNNSI currently has a poll up that made my stomach turn. It reads:

Who will be the next big name to lose to a DII squad? (If you hadn't heard - Ohio State lost to a school called Findlay)

The poll offers five teams to choose from and an "other" option for those creative enough to come up with their own answer. The fact that UCLA was an option makes me seriously question the credibility of the site as a reliable source for my sporting news. Obviously some uppity bitch in the poll department over at CNNSI is having a laugh. She can't possibly be serious, though. After doing fifteen minutes or so of extensive research into the question, I ticked the bubble next USC and submitted my incredibly refined opinion. I was relieved to see that the CNNSI readers were obviously in my corner on this one. In fact, UCLA was trailing like Barrack Obama playing one on one against K-Love. Heck, even the nondescript "other" had more votes than us.


Hopefully next week we will get some respect and thus, there will be no need for another installment of Expert Opinions. Don't count on it.

Expert Opinions

I have not been this excited about college basketball in a long time. With all the big pieces but AA returning, the addition of K. Love, and no Florida to dominate us in the tourney - this year could really be the year for UCLA basketball. So, in anticipation of the season I have enjoyed checking espn.com several times a day to boost my confidence further. But lo, the last few days have yielded several disappointments in this regard. Below are my top 5 picks for biggest disses of UCLA on espn.com in the last few days.

5. Jay Bilas lists his top ten pre-conference games that he'd pay to see. Conspicuously missing from the list - UCLA. It wouldn't be that big of insult as we don't really have any great pre-conference games, except for Texas. And #2 on his list...Texas vs Michigan State. Maybe this could be seen as a compliment to us in some way (he expects us to handle Texas and thus it will not be a great game to watch), but I still don't like it.

4. Fran Fraschilla has a similar list, but it even includes conference games. And you guessed it...UCLA not on the list. If I were to tell you that he picked a PAC-10 game that featured two of the nations top freshman recruits who would not be guarding each other in the match up...you would no doubt assume it was our game against our crosstown rivals and the matchup would be Love vs Mayo. Well, you would be wrong as Fraschila for some reason thinks that Mayo vs Budinger of Arizona is a better match up.

3. Not surprisingly, Fraschilla showed us little support in his chat from earlier today. He was asked point blank if this could be our year with Florida out of the way...he doesn't think so, we are among the top six teams, but it is not necessarily our year. In fact he doesn't see us in the final four...instead selecting Memphis, Louisville, Tennessee and North Carolina. And do we have a candidate for player of the year...nope. That my friends is what you call a triple dis.

2. Checking out another NCAA basketball chat, this time from the usually Bruin supporting Doug Gottleib, we find not a mention of our beloved Bruins. He is picking Kansas to win the tourney (widely believed to be a poor man's UCLA). When a WSU fan asks if UCLA will take the PAC-10, Gottlieb fails to make the pick. He even slurps on USC every chance he gets - praising Mayo and saying the Trojans have 3 NBA palyers on their squad.

And the biggest dis of the Bruins in the last few days on espn.com...

1. Doug Gottlieb had some seriously backhanded compliments for the two most beloved Bruins. In referring to Love's diminutive stature Gottlieb says, "His stats may be hurt, however, due to the depth of quality big men in the Pac-10. Remember that Brook Lopez, Jon Brockman, DeVon Hardin and C.J. Giles all will get up for Love." Of Darren Collison he says, "He is not a spectacular athlete" and "His shot is awkward-looking" and even goes as far to say, "He is not in the same class as Augustin, Rose or Chalmers". Ouch. Bite your tongue, sir. Ain't nobody talk that way about my chillun'.

So...in honor of the writers above, here's hoping espn.com decides to go for a week straight of Bill Walton authored pieces titled, "UCLA: the greatest thing in the history of everything". My confidence needs it.