Hotel Points Scarce for Bruin Basketball Team While at Home

If football coaches believe staying in a hotel the night before a home game is critical to the team’s success, why don’t basketball coaches demand their players sleep in a hotel before home games?

In 1994, the UCLA men’s basketball team did spend the night before most home games in a hotel.

“We lost in the first round to Tulsa,” said Coach Steve Lavin, an assistant coach at the time. “The next year, we didn’t stay in hotels and we went 32-1 and won the national championship.

“It turns out fundamentals, execution and defense are more important than staying in a hotel.”

Lavin is quick to note the differences that make the hotel option a more sensible one for the football team than for the basketball team, beyond the extra-long beds some hotels lack for his extra-tall players. In football, the Bruins play one game per week, on Saturday. When they play at home, they leave for the hotel after classes Friday.

In basketball, the Bruins generally play two games each week, most often on Thursday and Saturday. When the basketball team played at home and stayed in hotels, the players had to gather there Wednesday night, check out Thursday, go to classes, play Thursday night, head home, go to classes Friday and return to the hotel Friday night.

All UCLA teams participating in NCAA championship events held at UCLA stay in hotels, assistant athletic director Mike Dowling said.

The coaches of all teams, even those that do not generate the profits of football and men’s basketball, can ask for approval to stay in hotels before home games, he said. But the football team has by far the largest traveling party, plays relatively few games and plays far from campus at the Rose Bowl.

“Football is a different sport by nature,” he said.

When the UCLA basketball team did stay in hotels before home games, forward J.R. Henderson asked Lavin why the Bruins would risk losing some of a home-court advantage by disrupting the players’ daily routine and forcing them out of their dorms and apartments.

“I don’t understand why we want to play 32 road games,” Henderson said.