Bruin fans. we're back post-Crosstown loss...that one hurt...We chat about why UCLA lost that game (hint, same story all season) and what Foster and crew can do to try to change the narrative for this program against Fresno St. We also jump into hoopsland and discuss Mick Cronin's team's growth over the past few games. Lastly, we talk about your NUMBER 1 UCLA WBB program and how Cori Close's squad is reaching new heights. Check it out!
Bruin Source
Episode 152: A Wasted Opportunity
(upbeat music) - Welcome to Bruin Source, this is Zud. - This is Kevin. - It's the end of November, Thanksgiving week. Unfortunately, we're recording this. Most rivalry game loss. And yeah, we have a lot to talk about in this one, I guess, starting with football. And I guess let's start with the last Saturday. I think, I mean, you and I have talked a little bit about this, Kevin, I think it's really the same story for this rivalry loss. It was penalties, the lack of discipline and just some poor coaching decisions that ultimately sunk UCLA in this game. And what was a very winnable game, I would say? - I just wanna start here, I wanna start here. 'Cause a lot of times we've come on the show after heart-breaking losses, but we come on, we're like, well, I at least start by saying, well, hey, that was a great uniform game, great game for the sport, this, that, the other. That was a bad game between two bad teams. It was worthy of a five and five versus four and 16. That's exactly what that game was. I felt ashamed for hyping it up as much as I did. Like the week it leaning into it, how like, oh my God, it feels like the biggest thing. That was a bad game. And I think it's just good to start right there. This was two teams that had multiple opportunities, I would say to pull ahead at various points and never could really do it. On the USC side, I mean, they decisively won the field position battle in this decisively. I think they started every drive in the second half near midfield and UCLA started like behind the 20, almost every single time. They got inside the five like three or four times and then Lincoln Riley decides that when Woody Marks is running for like five yards a pop every time he touches it, throw fades with a quarterback who isn't very good at throwing fades. And like after the third time of doing that, you would think that, all right, well, this guy doesn't got this today, but now they just kept doing it. And on the UCLA side, it's what you said. It was penalties, it was lack of discipline. Ironically, it wasn't turnovers, which I fully expected at least one, if not two turnovers in this game on either side. And both teams had chances. UCLA was pretty good with the ball. The main one is the first drive with Ethan Garvers, the weird fumble that was then called an incomplete pass, which was the right call. On the other side, Jay and my other thought like, there was two, three opportunities where he threw one too. I think about the one that went right through Kane Madrana's hands. Even the touchdown was kind of like a bobbled little, maybe not a turnover worthy ball. There was a fumble that SC fell back on. So both teams got away, I thought with that. And but penalties for UCLA was the story. And a lot of their penalty yards do come from the halftime skirmish oddly enough, where I still don't know what happened there. It ended up not mattering because SC went for it out and UCLA took over and took a lead. Ultimately, the learning from this game and the whole season is you cannot go into a year with that kind of offensive line and ever expect to have consistency. You just can't. And UCLA, clearly that the book was out, we're going to send pressure up the middle whenever it's a money down. And they usually either got home or hadn't even garbage running for his life and he threw an errand pass. And that was the story to me of this game. There's so much bad play calling. There's so much, the offense was clearly stuck in mud and this, that and the other. The decisions to on the running backs on that third and short and fourth and short at the end of the game, like all that's there. But the bottom line to me on this entire season is you cannot go into a year with that kind of offensive line and ever expect to have consistent success. Just can't. - I agree with you on the offensive line. And we talked about this in the season preview. I mean, it was always kind of this online that was cobbled together with some returning talent, some new guys that Foster was able to pull from the transfer portal, but ultimately it was never going to be a high-end o-line, especially after some of the injuries and the lack of doubt. That being said, yes, the o-line was an issue in this game and has been all season. We were still in positions to win this game. And yes, the o-line probably costs us some of those things, but I still maintain some of the play calling and the lack of discipline is what really sunk us. I mean, there were some key drives. We had some false starts that shot us in the foot. There were some key drives where we had guys just missing and guys missing their assignments. We had some drives where the play calling on offense just was not up to par. You mentioned it, the third down decision to try to run Keegan Jones up the middle, terrible call. The decision on the fourth down to try to have Ethan Garber sneak it when he really doesn't do that very often, I thought was kind of a bad call in and of itself. I mean, you have guys like Anthony Atkins on the team who are big bruising backs. Why not use them in those situations? You mentioned all the pressure that Dantal Lynn was bringing on third down. We called a screen maybe once or twice and it worked on those situations. Why not do that until they back off a little bit more? Why not move the pocket in those situations when you know that there's gonna be pressure coming down to try to at least give Ethan Garber is a little bit more of a clean launch point. Those types of things just didn't manifest themselves in the play calling and that is ultimately mostly on Eric Bienemy. I mean, the last month or so, I think we've been a little bit more positive about Bienemy's play calling. But if you look at his whole body of work at UCLA, it's been subpar. It has not been up to snuff. It has not been an offense that has been even mediocre. I mean, this offense has been bad. And I don't think even with the old line that the talent warrants this offense be this bad. I mean, we've seen some of the playmakers on this team, right? Ethan Garber's one is on, can be a good quarterback. And I think he played a pretty good game here. TJ Hardin, when you're actually blocking for him, is a good back. I mean, he had a pretty good game in this one. He's in the first half at least, carving up that SC defense for the tune of like six, seven yards a carry. So he has the ability there. We have good receivers. Jay Michael Sturdevant in this game alone, like he was balling out. We just did not ever scheme an offense all season long to take advantage of those talents. And it was on full display in this one. It just, like you said, the offense was stuck in mud and it just couldn't get out of it. Couldn't get out of its own way. Couldn't get out of Eric the enemy's way. And it just, it was ugly, ugly, ugly football. I think we got to, so let's look at some of those coaching decisions, as you say. The biggest one to me is the third and short, where Keegan Jones is in for TJ Hardin. These are the kind of things. Like, so, look, DeShawn Foster, we know he's a young coach. He's had a lot of his issues this year. He's gonna have to learn and grow very quickly. These are the kind of things, you know, personnel in tight situations, substitution patterns in tight situations. What's your plan for the money-down, short yardage? What's your go-to stuff? Like, these are things that you got to rep and then you got to have ready to go on your call sheet. Like, that's gotta be a, like, okay, third and short, this is where I'm going, this is what we're doing. These are the kind of things that we saw throughout the year that if you're a young coach and, you know, you ever hope to get better at the stuff, like, what is it that you expected? What situations do you expect to be in? You got to rep them a lot of times. And this looked like, you know, that those third and short, fourth and short, decisions I thought were fine to go for it. The one decision, I think, to not go for it, you know, in the, towards the beginning of the game, I think it was what, like, fourth down from the USC 40 or something like that, fourth and four. So I think that one probably should have gone for it, but otherwise, most decisions I thought were okay, but it's the situation. It's like, what are you gonna do now in those situations? You got to get those right. Some weird stuff happened at the end of this game too. We got to talk about, you know, looked like UCLA was in pretty good control up 13 to nine. They got the big play to J. Michael Sturdivan, who it looks like once a year reminds us that, hey, I'm really good at this stuff. Like there's that one token game a year where he reminds us of that. And Brody Richter, something's just been going on within these last couple of weeks, like, shanks the punt. The one call of the game that I think was like, maybe not being talked about enough is the double pass that SC calls in the next one, 'cause their offense was stuck in mud. They were stuck in mud. And that double pass just kind of gave him that one bit, in a game like this, you need one big play to just break everything open. And that gave it to him. They got kind of a bouncy, flooky touchdown out of it. And that was kind of the deal. UCLA didn't have that one big play. That kind of just broke the game open 'cause in this game, where it's an ugly pillow fight, that's usually all it takes. You say I didn't have that. - We've talked a lot about what wrong in this game. I think rightfully so. Let's maybe talk about a couple of positives that we did see. I think the defense, we've been talking about it all season. Ikai Kamaloye has earned his keep around here. The defense stood up time and time again in this game. You mentioned it, part of it was Lincoln Riley calling bad plays. But largely, the three goal line stands. I think it was three that the defense had in this game, ultimately kept UCLA in it until the very end. I mean, we had control of the score for going into the fourth quarter. A lot of that was largely because the defense was not letting us see score. They were not letting their offense operate smoothly. I was worried about past defense in this game. The DBs played pretty well here. The pass rush didn't hit home as much, but they were rushing my off quite a bit. It's been really fun to watch this defense, especially going into the season, thinking we were not gonna be able to have a decent defense. We have cobbled together pretty effective defense here. And ultimately, they kept us in this game. So they should keep their heads high, held up high here, because they were really the one shining aspect of UCLA football this season, and even against our rivals. You mentioned it again, but I'll mention his name again. J. Michael Stuart, that second half, almost carried that offense single-handedly. He made some incredible catches to keep UCLA's offense moving, that we ultimately squandered those opportunities. The one big opportunity that comes to mind is the deep shot that Garbers took to him that he almost punched in, right? And I think he was down at like the four or five yard lineman. We couldn't capitalize on that. But J. Michael Stuart and that played a really good game. I think I thought TJ Hardin played really well in this one, too. TJ Hardin really, really hates SC. He really, really hates SC. He ran all over them again. But again, the issues weren't between the '20s. It was really red zone offense and being able to actually score touchdowns for either team. But our team has struggled with this all season long. We just couldn't engineer enough points in in this one, because we had opportunities to really step on their throats, because the defense kept us in those situations. But we couldn't put it away. And that was ultimately what was frustrating about this, is it was there for the taking. It was there for the taking all night long. And what was frustrating is, it was those two or three ugly things that kept shooting us ourselves in the foot, and we couldn't get through. - Yeah, and now I think we can start, 'cause I think we've discussed this bad game as much as we can discuss it. The macro take on this. Look, DeShawn, UCLA is not gonna do a bowl game this year. And they got one game left against Fresno State. I still think it's a big game. There is a big difference between going five and seven and four and eight. But the win, there's a little wind out of the sales right now. For the UCLA base, winning this game is a big deal. I think winning that game, getting the chance to go to a bowl game this week, it would have been big for DeShawn Foster and this whole program, I think, it would have probably boosted some donor support. It would have just boosted the overall morale of the fan base. But with that said, it's one game, it's a big game, but it's one game. They gotta figure it out this week, because you lose this week, and then any of the good will you got from the three wins in the middle of the year, I think it's hard to sell. And college football is storytelling, and it would be very hard to sell. So this is a big one this week, and then I think we can look at the whole overall, what's going on here? - Yeah, I mean, like, we'll do the season recap after our game Saturday, but you said it well, it really takes the win out of the sales. I think you look at our previous coach, right? I mean, he had some really bad seasons in there, but partially lived off beating SC. He is first season terrible, but he beat USC at home, and ultimately gained a lot of goodwill out of that, and the fans even after that season were kind of still fairly supportive. We were waiting to see what that project looked like because he was able to be at USC. This is a situation now for Deshawn Foster, where he wasn't able to keep the victory bell at home. He wasn't able to make sure that we're gonna be bowl eligible in this game in the season. That story now becomes really, really difficult to sell. And now you're going into a game against Fresno State, which we haven't beaten in five games in a row we've played against them the last 20 years. So there's some history here. This isn't just like a random school we're playing here. There's some history here. And we go into this game knowing we're not bowl eligible. We can't become bowl eligible. I'm very curious to see how Deshawn Foster keeps these guys motivated because there's, you mentioned there are plenty of stuff to play for, right? In terms of the macro picture, but that's really hard to sell to players right now. I gotta imagine, going into this game, there's some level of deflation here and some confidence being low amongst this team. I haven't looked at any of the practice stuff obviously this week, but I just, I can't imagine that there's gonna be a lot of energy going into this game. - It's the NLU transfer portal era, right? So a lot of people now at this time of year, they're looking for their next situations. And with the one, the biggest achievement, I think for Deshawn Foster this year is he kept the guys together. He kept them playing through the whole year. The one positive thing for sure that I think we can bank on. And so this is the biggest test of that this week because it is a big week. Huge difference between going four and eight and five and seven 'cause you win four out of five or four out of six, I think it would be to finish the year. Like a four and two finish, like that is something to sell in your first year. There is something there. And look, it's probably gonna be a very sparse crowd at the Rose Bowl this weekend, very sparse. It's probably gonna be like the players, parents, and like no one else. This is gonna be a test. And Fresno's, they've thrown egg on our face before. So it's not that kind of Fresno team though this year. So the ones that we've gotten are our faces handed to us. So it's a big game. And look, in the macro, like we'll do the season recap as you say, I think it's a big game, particularly for the offense and for Eric Bieni. Because right now what you have is three games where everything was good. And then the last two games where sure there was some movement, like we moved the ball a bit, but largely it was not effective. And against two like so, so defenses as well. And I think, so I think this is a big moment when we talk about the season recap we're gonna do, the report cards. It kind of can alloy this year is getting an A. I think he deserves an A. Eric Bieni, like, I don't know if this is possible right now. So we got it, we got it, and it still made it, who knows depending on what happens with Fresno State, how, if it can even be possible. So a lot to play for, still. - I agree there's a lot to play for to sell to the fans, to sell to donors and NIL collectives and that kind of thing. I'm just curious to see how that translates down. And obviously a lot to play for the coaches to your point, but how does that translate down to the players? - The players, yeah. - That is, I think, going to be the key question. And you make a good point. Sean Foster's done a good job of keeping this team playing and playing hard, but even though, so you look at, and they were losing those games, right? There was still a future there, right? You could still say, hey, look, we can still play our way in a ball eligibility. We go for a run. Hey, we still have our big rivalry game. Like winning that means everything. All that's past now. We can't be ball eligible. We don't have a rivalry game to go into. There's really not a lot to look forward to for some of these players, especially some of these seniors. And like you said, it's the NIL era now. Some of these guys, I gotta imagine are thinking, hey, we love Coach Foster. He's kept us motivated. Blah, blah, blah. Is there something better for me out there though? I mean, if I'm Carson Schwesinger, great story. Walk on who's playing at an all American level and give credit to Kai Kamaloye again for recognizing his talent and putting him in those positions to be able to succeed the way he has. But if I'm Carson Schwesinger, am I saying, look, I've elevated my profile to such a level that I can go play for an actual competitive team or competitive program next year. Do I make a move? Like those questions have got to be in the back of some of these players' minds. And you know, frankly, I wouldn't blame them if they weren't in this game against Fresno State, which is essentially meaningless from a player perspective, besides pride. It's gonna be tough, I think, to get these guys playing at 100% here. On the flip side, I know you mentioned, Fresno State is not the team that they usually are. But those guys, man, they love to come to LA and beat up on, you know, the two big name programs. They love to go to places like Cal in the Bay or even Stanford and beat up on those programs 'cause we've talked about this. It's like these programs, like Fresno State, they take a lot of talent from these areas that are often overlooked by the big power programs. And they play with a chip on their shoulders, those Central Valley kids come in and they just wanna beat you up because UCLA, you'll pass on giving them a scholarship or UCLA over recruited them, like whatever that is, like they wanna beat us back. And that is, I think, a stronger motivation for any team than what we have right now. So I'm curious to see how this plays out. And yeah, it's gonna be dead in the Rose Bowl, better than it probably has been, even the rest of the season. It's gonna be a weird game day experience, I think. It's gonna be very quiet in there. So hopefully we can find some motivation and dig deep and try to push for a win here. But I see it being very tough to be motivated. If I were a player, I wouldn't be. I'll say that way. - Yeah, and I think this stuff you said about Carson's question, Jer. James Michael Surtivant coming out of this game, look like, yeah, people are gonna be looking after their situations now in this day and age. And that ultimately looked like, whether we win this game, lose this game, like the success of this season was, is there enough to, enough juice to boost the funds to then go out and get a roster for next season? And ultimately, that's where the success or failure of this season will lie. A lot of that is on to Sean Foster, so it's also on the athletic department. Right now, as we look a little bit ahead for football, we have a lot to replace on this roster. We're gonna have some guys who are gonna go seek out better deals like Carson's question, Jer, for sure. And then you also have some coaches who have overperformed their contracts. The guy came away as overperformed his deal. And so they're gonna have to go and get the funds to keep him around if they don't wanna avoid what happened with Danton Lynn last year. And so a lot of this job, yes, it's on to Sean Foster to get out there. It's also on our athletic director, Martin Jarman, who now is, I mean, apparently signed on for a three-year extension. Ironically, that was announced in the midst of our three-game winning streak for football, and now we're on a two-game losing streak. - That was planned, let's be honest. - They knew it was. - They knew it was. - Of course it was. So let's just talk about this for a little bit. - I know, we haven't talked about it on the show. - Yeah. - I think it's worth mentioning. - Martin Jarman got this three-year extension. If you believe the reports from Ben Bolich and Sports Illustrated and stuff like that, this was ready back in the spring when you and me and everyone else that supports this program were fuming. Because of all the stuff that happened with Chip Kelly, the mismanagement of the program, the NIL, the Gutter, all of it. And the season didn't, we heard nothing about this through the summer. The season started, we heard absolutely nothing about it. And all of a sudden, three-game win streak, we hear this extension was already agreed to the whole time. This is the kind of stuff that I'm talking about with UCLA, where it's like someone assumes that we're done. Someone assumes that either we don't care about this stuff or that we can be sold. And the truth is the answer is no to both of those things. And I think we have enough proof of the pudding to say that. I mean, you and me have been doing this for what, four years now? Like our little Rinky Dink Podcast has gotten a little bit of a following. We see what the UCLA engagement looks like online. There are people who love this program. There are people who are passionate brewing fans. And we know what's up. And this is a microcosm or everything that just kind of annoys me when it comes to UCLA and their athletics. It's, you know, because they think it doesn't matter to them, it doesn't matter to us. And therefore we can be sold on it. And, you know, just an overall, you know, microcosm, I think of what's been going on in many, like this is the same thing happen with Chip Kelly. It's the same thing that happened with everything else, right? It's like, we'll figure out the story to sell instead of figuring out what's right to do. - When this was announced publicly, at least the last few weeks, and I saw that notification or tweet or whatever, let me know that this happened. I wanted to chuck my phone out the window. I was so mad because for all the reasons you mentioned, but also we continue to keep promoting and extending underperforming leaders in athletics. And I don't think that is crazy to say about Martin German. Martin German is very good at being a smiley, happy presence on social media. And that's great. I'm glad he can promote UCLA on his own social media presence, though, you know, you can argue, is that an effective way to promote athletics with just his social media presence? I don't know. That's a different conversation, but great. You know, he exudes enthusiasm. He's young, blah, blah, blah, all good stuff. But you look at his actual track record of his leadership at UCLA Athletics. And when you examine track record and success, I think you really, really have to focus on football. That's the moneymaker. And to some extent, basketball. But let's even put that to the side, football. You look at his track record here. Abysmal. It is absolutely abysmal. He retained a very bad coach for way too long, and on top of retaining him, extended him to the point where the guy should have been fired and ended up leaving for a downgrade job as an offensive coordinator. He's had mostly losing seasons as an athletic director and has not done anything, like I mentioned, to actually fix that. And then on top of that, he, again, not necessarily a knock-on-dish on Foster necessarily, but went and hired a coach who has never been a coach, a head coach. And this is not a program that you should be learning on the job look. He has really, really, I think, failed the football program and ultimately failed the athletics department. You know, we can look at a couple of successes he may have had, right? You can think about how he got us out of the, through some of the Under Armour deal into Nike and Jordan, though, again, reports on that, a little middling to say, "Hey, he didn't really maybe have much to do with that." And actually might have fumbled some of that on his, with his own team, but we won't get into too much of that. And then the other big thing that you can say he accomplished was the big, big 10 move. And I really think he might not have had a whole lot to do with that. I think he got lucky with it. If you look at kind of all the reporting as a whole and maybe read between some of the lines, I think he was in the right place at the right time. And, you know, to his credit took advantage of that, but I don't think that was necessarily something that of his doing. And we still went out and looked at the whole body of work, which has been middling at best if I'm being nice, and decided to extend him. And not only extend him, but we, we decided to extend him where the guy who had decided to extend him was the outgoing chancellor. So, you know, we can blame Martin Darman for all these shortcomings and whatnot. But really this, this kind of wides on Gene Block. Why is the outgoing chancellor naming anybody here? Like why are, like, what logic is there about this? I don't understand that. Yeah, look, here's the, we as fans, for the most part, we judge our football program and our men's basketball program. And now lately, you know, the women's basketball program, you know, you're usually looking at football and basketball as a fan. And you're saying, are we winning or are we losing? And then you're saying, okay, based on it for winning and losing, do we have the right things in place to fire and hire coaches at a successful clip? That means that when a coach is failed, you are firing. And then you are hiring more successful coaches than not. But then when you're, you made a bad hire, you're not making your bad, you're firing. And on those lines, you just, you have to say that Martin Jarmond, with the most objective analysis has been really bad. Chip Kelly should have been fired after year four when he first came on board. He wasn't. He was given an extension. At that time, he had the worst four year record of any UCLA coach ever. He got an extension, whatever happened, happened. And then last season, once again, he should have been fired back in November. Everyone wanted it. There were very few UCLA fans that were for keeping Chip Kelly. And he didn't give it to him. He kept him along, made a lot of excuses about the budgetary situations at UCLA. And try to, again, try to sell us a story that we should be happy with what's going on. And that, I think ultimately is kind of what the deal is with Martin Jarmond. I don't want to use the word outsider because that can sound like you're a bit too tribal. You only want people from your own, you know, your own house to be leading the charge. It's like, we weren't happy with Dan Guerrero because we thought he was a bit too tribal. And a bit too in tune with UCLA's administration to not take bigger risks and not take, you know, to have higher expectations. It's a bureaucrat. That better way to say a bureaucrat. Jarmond comes from, you know, he comes from Big Ten country. He comes from the East Coast. And so I guess you could say, look, like you mentioned how much he did or didn't have to do with the Big Ten move. Like, I'll even get past that for a second. He got us to the Big Ten, whatever he did or didn't have to do with it. And I don't think that Dan Guerrero or a person that was at UCLA for a long time would have chosen to go that direction. And it was a thing that was necessary for our school. Okay. Well, what else comes with this? Well, because he's from the Big Ten and he's from the East Coast. And he's mainly been working for the last 20 years. His perception of UCLA is not what our perception is. UCLA's fan base has like a middle to older age group that like what they remember was going to Rose Bowls. They remember being number one of the first BCS rankings. Like they remember that that was what the standard was. Not to win national championships every year, but to compete for conference championships. They remember, you know, what the standard always has been for UCLA basketball. So you have that group who actually makes up most of your donor base right now. If I had to guess like, I don't know who's on the contact list, but if I had to guess, it's people who like followed the program for a very long time. And so you have that you also have younger fans like ourselves who like we never saw that stuff. We never saw, you know, Troy Aikman or even like we barely were probably watching sports when Kate McNally was playing. But we know what UCLA can be. We got a glimpse of it over the Jim Mora era. And we saw what a legitimate contending team can look like even if they're not breaking all the way through. And that ultimately I think is his big failure that like his opinion that we should just be okay with what's going on his opinion that we would look at the situation and think that UCLA football like this is kind of what they should be. We never should be actually contending nationally. And then also knowing that like the landscape of football is changing and all these things are here and knowing that we're not doing anything about it, knowing that we're not doing anything to stay ahead of the times. I just keep going back to this point UCLA alums fans like I think we're a very unique school. We aren't Northwestern in the West Coast. Our alums are pretty diverse and everything that they go into. You have a ton of people who are sports fans, even if they're not passionate college sports fans. And they know what's up and Martin Jarman's inability to understand that to understand that we got a lot of people who take pride in the school, but they're not going to take pride in a mediocre athletic department they're just not that's not what UCLA is. And they have bigger expectations and they have expectations to essentially say like they want to see that the people in charge are giving their all to this. And we see that they're not. And I think that more than anything else is kind of just what his big failure has been like he doesn't get the fan base he doesn't get the alumni base and what our expectations are. And what our expectations are of him to make sure that he's doing everything he can to deliver that to say that that is the standard. Right now, there's never kind of been there's never been that acknowledgement that that is what the standard should be that we should be nationally competitive that we should be a program that we are all proud of. And we should be competitive in the NIL space and I'm going to sidebar here for a second because like there was other big recruiting news this week. About, you know, the number one player in the country Bryce Underwood and going to Michigan and how you know basically was because the Larry Ellison and the Oracle family like they got a whole thing going on with the Michigan Medical Center and so they got this whole thing together with the collectives to basically bankroll a ton of money for this upcoming recruiting class. This idea that UCLA is conservative and should you know be sitting behind the sidelines waiting to see what's happened. Like our schools that we consider our peer schools now Michigan Notre Dame USC like these are schools who are all very academically doing very well. And they're in this game now and they are not being shy about it. This is over the table they're finding the titans of industry that work with their school in different ways and getting them to the table to make sure that their school stays competitive in athletics. Like where is that effort from UCLA because it can be easily can be done at UCLA with the people with the right talent. And again we're not talking about Alabama, Michigan Notre Dame USC like these are schools that we consider like we're better than but like our peers in the kind of pseudo athletic academic world. Our alums can see that Martin German is not doing everything he can to get us in a better spot there and until they see that from him they're not going to they're not going to support him. Look, I think the word for Martin German is complacent and he kind of lives on this flimsy veneer of social media. You make a good point of hey, he's looking at his perception of UCLA and what you know it is and should be today and like how it has been the last 20 years. But I think and that's what he's complacent with but I think as a part of your job as a part of athletic director that shouldn't matter. I think it behooves him and it behooves any leader to look at whatever your organization is whether it's an athletics department or any company or anything and say hey, we want to, we want to improve. We want to look at that other program and you know, get to that gold standard, whether that's hey we want to become Alabama and football like let's work our way towards that gold standard. Doesn't mean it's going to happen overnight doesn't mean we're ever even going to reach to that gold standard but like as a leader he should be striving to be better and get our athletics department better in every aspect. So to your point it can be better we know that we have our own golden standard and that we're ultimately underperforming as an athletics program. But regardless of our own history it shouldn't matter. He, as the athletic director of a major program with so much history should be saying hey we need to be better we should be getting better. That is, that is his failure like you mentioned it is a failure. And to go ahead and say hey we're going to extend this failure. I think it's a slap in the face of every alum and donor and fan. It really is, and that's what's been so frustrating with him and you know he can keep going around taking photos with fans and smiling and doing all that but ultimately if he doesn't improve the program. None of that matters it's it's all useless. It's not helping anybody it's not helping the UCLA brand and I don't see a whole lot of change with with him being up to help now. Again the big caveat here is Julio Frank takes over this summer and so does the new boss sit by and say okay yep this is going great or is there a little bit more fire being lit under him to improve. To look at the football program and say hey we need to be better than this or look at NIL and say hey we need to improve this. I don't know that all remains to be seen and maybe that's what he needs is a more stringent boss. Maybe that's what's what's going to take it's going to take for him to get going and maybe he is capable of doing those things but I'm not going to hold my breath on that because I don't think you necessarily need a stringent boss to tell you to do that that should come with the territory that should be just a part of the job. And it hasn't been and he's scraping by making you two three million dollars a year with doing frankly the bare minimum. If if the athletics director job is just simply going and taking photos with the fans and taking photos with students and tweeting stuff out and building an Instagram help. Sign me up I can do that for half the price. Yeah I completely agree. I mean look a lot a lot of stuff to come with football this offseason like he is a younger guy he's been talking more about NIL and all that like this is the future. He's got the brand of UCLA and he's just got to go do the work of actually getting behind them and talking to them so but like it's all he got his deal. He has the ability to fix it. As you say, Chancellor Frank is coming in. Hopefully he holds a higher standard. Hopefully that's that's the hope because I don't think he's going to hold himself to higher standard. And yeah, we'll see what happens with him but I think we're going to get more of the same and we'll ultimately be kind of grinding our gears a little bit and being stuck in mud and we'll see. But yeah it was it was unfortunate I think for a lot of UCLA fans to see that kind of news come through and knowing the whole context of it when it was signed and when it was announced and who pushed for the extent like all that was just it was so UCLA right just shooting yourself in the foot to try to make a cheap deal here. And here we are. But more more to come there I guess we'll see how how this develops under the new regime of Julio Frank but yeah definitely disappointing. We've talked a lot about football we've talked a lot about Martin German but you know basketball still still rolling. It's still early season but I think it's fair to say we've seen a lot of improvements since that New Mexico game. I think we are now starting to see a little bit more of a cohesive team. And some of the McChronan ball aspects starting to develop in a positive way. What are you what are you seeing with this team right now Kevin because I think there's there's a lot to talk about here there's been several games since we've talked about this. I think the first thing is defensively it's overmatched competition we're doing to overmatch competition what a good team should be doing to overmatch competition beating beating them by 2030 40 points and I think we're seeing that. But more than that I think we're seeing a lot more less assignment errors a lot less thinking a lot more reacting. And so that is whether we're in. Deshawn Foster's mantra is DRE McChronan is very simple DT defense turnovers. And like we have we've seen the group it works okay play good defense. You force turnovers you prevent your own turnovers and along those lines. This team has been improving but defensively the stats are all really good but more than the stats I think on ball defense has has improved guys are staying for their man. When they're pressing you don't see those breakdowns down the court for wide open threes as frequently like when you press your you're always gambling and so you're going to have that once in a while. But it's not happening with the frequency that it did before I'm still not sure how it looks against high major athletes but it looks better for sure. I think you have players that are adjusting to McChronan basketball particularly the ones that we needed to Kobe Johnson I think has had a positive last couple games both in terms of his creating turnovers his own defense and then you know his own getting an idea of what he wants to do an offense. Dylan Andrews showed us last game that pay that that stuff is still there. It's just not coming out maybe as consistently as as we need it to but it's that stuff is still there. Eric daily continues to be very consistent Tyler bill to have an off game yesterday but otherwise has been very consistent so you're seeing from some players signs of consistency signs of learning. And then from other players I think there are like we just should should brace ourselves for a lot of sky clerk this year. It's just looks like that's not going anywhere. And let's let's talk about sky for a second. I'm confused about sky clerk and why he's getting so many minutes because to me when I see him on the floor and maybe I'm missing something. But it seems like the classic case of mistaking activity for achievement because he is active and he's doing a lot. But I don't know what he's achieving with that activity right now. I think look you and I don't follow high school recruiting. We never saw him in when he was a prospect that was at one point it was close to a five star and he ended up at Kentucky and all that. I don't get any of this. I don't get this. He's six foot six foot one. He's a little pudgily built. I guess we can say that he's just he's not well he's stocky. He's a stocky right he's stocky. He struggles on defense because of his athletic limitations even against, you know, not the best competition he's shown some signs of that. And his, but his positive is supposed to be that he's a good shot maker a good shot creator. And we're not seeing any of that right now so so my thing was guy Clark is this. If make us decide and we've seen this before too okay like when Mick tells you he likes a player believe him because you're going to see him a lot. So if we're going to see Scott Clark a lot. He's got to add what he's supposed to add which is shot making which is like scoring injection. He's not a little couple times last night like that little step back the tiger Campbell ask step back like I think that's why I make like him out of high school even like he reminded him a little bit of tiger Campbell like a good shooter. Well then we've got to see that some of that. He's passing up open threes pretty frequently right now where they're not completely open but like again if your role is to be a shot maker then you've got to be a shot maker. And I think it was like if we're if he's going to play he has to contribute something and that is supposed to be the thing he contributes like clearly we're not seeing it but clearly like his defensive assignments must be spot on. As you say the activity must be like I'm not I'm not sure I agree with you on the activity versus achievement thing but clearly someone seeing something there to keep him on the floor over other guys. He's got to add the skill that he's supposed to add. I mean maybe and maybe there's an element of confidence here that we are not saying right is he's doing everything right he's tying the shots and there's some lack of confidence that he just needs to be rebuilt I don't know. I just I see him running around a lot. I see him you know he creates some deflections he can get in the passing lanes he is you know decently quick hands. Certainly I also see him turning the ball over I see him you know missing open shots you know making some confusing decisions is passing is decent but I wouldn't say it's you know anything popping off the screen. Yeah he's out there every game and it almost feels like he commit Cronin is just thinking it's Tiger Campbell out there because the hair and without all the positive things that Tiger Campbell brought to the brought to the floor. I don't know it's it's it's a weird confusing thing because when you look at our other guards so far and I think we talked about the guard rotation last time and you're wanting to see some clarity and some sort of thoughtful rotation out of out of all the guards that we have when you look at the guard rotation. I got a I got to say you got to put Trent Perry in over him just for the basic upside out of Trent Perry that we've seen so far aside from the physical tools that he possesses like that kid just seems to get basketball even more so than Sky Clark and it's just curious to see Sky getting so many minutes over guys like Trent Perry guys like Dom Harris who we barely see him like I can't even say we have enough of a sample size to say hey Sky Clark is significantly better than Dom Harris because we just haven't seen Dom Harris play a lot and this Dom Harris is really that much worse because the physical tools of Dom Harris are significantly better than Sky Clark I mean he's way more athletic he's bigger it's just a curious case. Well this is where I wonder if this is where it is but Dom Harris is also like when he gets a chance he got a produced man and we're like now is that because his confidence has been shot is that because of I don't know but I do agree with the basic theory that playing time has to be earned Dom Harris isn't earning anything right now and like so I hope for him that he can get in and you know get more time. I think for Sky Clark though is I'm not sure he's earned it either and right and so you look at Trent Perry Sebastian like they should very clearly be over Sky Clark right now based on production. I'm like Lazarus Stefanovich he looks like a guy who gets micronan basketball and he's making shots. That means to me he's got to play. And so you got three guards now that demand playing time along with Dylan Andrews and Kobe Johnson. Sky Clark has got to earn his place amongst amongst those guys and if he's the only way for him to earn his place in my mind is he's got to get play the role that he's supposed to play. Yeah I mean and that's just the way I see it overall I think for the team. Post play has been encouraging because I think the best version of this team is going to need post like a proper post in there for 30 35 minutes. I am done with midget ball. I don't know about you like I am done with this small ball stuff. We're not the Houston Rockets we're not the Golden State Warriors. All right, like our guys are skilled and talented they're not Steph Curry and clay and Andre Guidala and dream on green as a passer like that's that's not what we're playing with here. So play a normal team like for micronan like this is your DT alright DT with a normal lineup like play a normal lineup and get them to play your way and I think we can be successful we've seen this be successful the faster we get there the faster. The faster that will all be happy. And the post play I think has been like William Kyle is improving a dime are is improving. Now we got to see it against high major competition, particularly for a dime are but for both of them. How do they hold up we're about to play great Osabor next against Washington. How do we hold up against a guy like that. Against Oregon and Nate Biddle that's going to be another test so we're going to see some some good tests coming up to see how ready for prime time we really are. And that's Bob. A dime are I will say let's give him some props though because we have not seen him play this level of basketball ever. Even last season against these smaller West talented teams. A dime are really seems to be coming on. He's clearly developing he looks like a serviceable player at the D1 level at this point. We've always seen the flashes of it but now he's actually putting together some consistent games. Again like you mentioned we'll see how he does against high majors but even seeing it against these teams is a huge huge improvement from where he was last season. It just seems like he's confident and playing up to his his potential now a little bit more than he was last year and that that's that's great to have in your back pocket. As a second different look at a big man than that William Kyle. The other guy that we haven't mentioned a lot of but we should is Eric daily. Eric daily I think might be like all around right now looks like our best player on this on the court. At any given point he's scoring he's rebounding he's playing good defense. The athleticism you know is there to be a very good wing and wing defender. I've been really really impressed with William Eric daily not William daily I don't know who William daily is. He's been he's been an excellent player. I just saw last night after we beat Southern Utah by like 40 50 points. This is Nick Cronin's the first six games or for seven games. Nick Cronin is winning these games by the highest point margin that he ever has at UCLA by the tune of like averaging 24 point margin victories here. That was really interesting to me seeing that stat because obviously we have had some excellent teams under Nick Cronin. And you know when we were looking at this team even a month ago we were I want to say panicking but a little bit discouraged with how we were looking especially on offense. And so against even cupcakes we're looking like we are improving at the bare minimum on offense here. And I think we talked about defense how it's how it's been you know jelly and looking good at defense and statistically the defense on Ken Palm is number four in the country. Hard to take anything away from that right now especially since we've played mostly really bad teams but you know it that that's what the data is saying right now. But I think the offense just seems to be moving a little bit better we're passing the ball we're creating better books. We're shooting the ball a lot better from three point line. It's just it everything isn't it's nothing's perfect yet I don't think we're we've gotten to the point where this team is ready to be playing and beating top 20 top 10 level competition. But you can see the direction it's going and you can see the improvement game after game and the trend line is trending up. I think that aspect of this team is really encouraging I feel a lot more encouraged at least personally than I did a month ago. And now I think the thing that holds us all back because I think two things one for me maybe this is a personal problem for me like I just don't see this mission ball stuck working against a better opponent. So like that's maybe my own personal problem. But otherwise I think everyone has gotten a lot better as you said the margins of victory have been with a margin so victory should be against these kind of teams. And now we just got to go do it against high major competition which big 10 play starts now we got Washington and then we got Oregon who just went and beat a top 25 Texas A and M team and then we got three top 20 teams in a row. So, it's big boy time for from a crime, like time to go show up and show out to make sure that we're not entering conference play like scraping and chronic calling for a tournament bid ideally we come out of this feeling good about the team and just feeling good about the direction of everything. Definitely I think starting off strong in conference is going to be key I think we got a whole serve home against Washington. I think Oregon on the road is going to be a tough one but we'll see I think those are the first big tests now we failed against New Mexico. Now we have games that matter even more than New Mexico with the high major teams not only on major teams and also conference teams. We were predicted to what be third in the conference this year. I think being anything lower than three three or four, you know the top kind of third of the conference would be a huge failure here. Now it's it's kind of put up or shut up time as conference play rounds is right around the corner and the team seems to be jelling and I think we need to really now step up our game in these next two two games here but yeah I mean overall I think the trend line is positive here about men's basketball I think we're seeing a lot of improvement and I have to again keep grounding myself like yes we were super hyped about the talent I came in. But I know we we kept telling ourselves like we got to reel in a little bit we know there's going to take some time for this team to gel together we know that there's going to be some bumps along the road. And there have been and then we we have to keep reminding ourselves that that you know just because we have a bunch of really really good players on the team doesn't mean we're going to be able to win games. The way of micron and wants to win games or be as effective as a holistic team here. And I think we're starting to see an actual team playing as a as a concept rather than a much a really good players playing by themselves. It's all good stuff there but let's talk about the the women's team here because that's really the crown jewel of UCLA basketball right now. I mean, you want to look at you know I'm going to harken back a little bit to some of the conversation around Martin German and the fan base. You want to look at a prime example of UCLA fans showing up for something because a team is actually built to be successful and is being successful on the court look at women's basketball and look at that game against South Carolina. I've not seen probably pavilion that full since probably Jaime ha Kess's last season at UCLA. The when we were we were you know, a top five top 10 kind of team. Yeah, look, I primarily I think the driver for that is the big on matchup between South Carolina and UCLA but now with that said, women's basketball has had a pretty good track record of attendance, particularly these big games. They're they're selling out to where their attendance record is pretty much like the men's it's kind of quiet for these smaller games and then the big big boys come to town or big girls come to town and it's packed USC. In this case South Carolina, it was Stanford for a long time and the pack 12 will see who that is in the big 10. There's a clear there's clear evidence here that if you build it properly, it doesn't mean you've got to build it to where they're number one. Build a respectable program that UCLA alums can be proud of. And they'll support they'll support it. Now, in this case, particular for women's basketball, huge win for Corey close for coach close and the whole program. To get to number one, it's the first time it's happened for UCLA and women's basketball. And the way it happened doing was it was a dominant performance. Lauren bets looks like she may be a contender for, you know, I mean, protect potentially after the Juju Watkins and page beakers and such like a contender for right there for player of the year, and college basketball. Kiki Rice has returned clearly jolted things that the transfers that have come over. It's a well rounded unit that's got firepower everywhere that shares the ball well and has a matchup problem for everybody Lauren but you can't match up with that no one in women's basketball is going to be able to match up with that. And so, huge credit to coach clothes. And now we don't hoping we can sustain this. Can we get a number one seed this year like this is going to be exciting stuff. This is probably the most well rounded roster we've seen. I mean, there are always one or two holes, I think, for the team, even as well as Corey close has been recruiting. But from top to bottom, you look at this team, you have size, you have athleticism, and you have elite shooting. We didn't mention it, but London Jones absolutely torched South Carolina. She could not miss from three point line. I'm also really impressed with the lean on a solo. I mean, she comes in and she's just really steady poised to make a gardener's been great overall. I mean, this is a really, really deep team. And you need that depth to make a deep run. Now we sit at the top of the standings. I mean, number one in the country for some in program history. Let's see if we can hold on to it. I mean, it's going to be a fun, fun season. I'm really looking forward to some of the cross town rivalry games. I think, you know, the big 10 is going to run through Los Angeles this year and, you know, who can win those match ups. That's going to be key, but look, we're in pole position here. Let's, let's keep our, our foot on the pedal, keep, keep chugging along and it's going to be a fun season. I think we're going to be being for a treat here and it's, it's nice for Corey close to finally break through that, that wall and get over that hump a little bit. And that's been kind of her biggest criticism right is we've been so close at these big stage games at these huge match ups. And we always give, give these good teams a good run for their money, but now I think we can firmly say like, hey, we are an elite team up there with the likes of South Carolina and all these other programs. And so, let's, let's see how this season unfolds, but right now really, really huge achievement by, by close in the team. I agree. Cool. Yeah, I know this was a long episode. I guess we had a lot to talk about, but anything else, anything else we want to. I think we got it. Cool. Well, we will wish everybody a very happy Thanksgiving. We are recording this day before Thanksgiving. So I don't know if we'll get it published before then but either way, happy Thanksgiving. You know where to find the show, Spotify, Apple podcasts, we're on Twitter, X, we will be on blue sky shortly. Feel free to share the show with all your friends and family. We always appreciate that. And as always, we will catch you next week and go Bruins.