Howland Wants Team to Get Tough

Monday was a great day of practice, UCLA Coach Ben Howland said, and there were smiles all around from Dijon Thompson, Michael Fey, Arron Afflalo, Jordan Farmar and Lorenzo Mata.

But Howland also will be happy if the Bruins, 10-6 overall and 4-4 in Pacific 10 Conference play, smile a little less Saturday when they try to break a four-game losing streak to USC (9-10, 2-6).

Howland wants to see some toughness, feel some defensive ferocity from the Bruins, who will try to end their own three-game losing streak in the 1 p.m. game at the Sports Arena.

The major piece of news from UCLA’s weekly media briefing Tuesday was that Ryan Hollins, despite his almost total absence from the Bruins’ home losses to Stanford and California, will be the primary backup to Fey at center.

Mata, a freshman, was so welcoming to veteran post players Rob Little of Stanford and David Paris of Cal that Paris had a career high of 20 points and Little scored two momentum-swinging layups in a row until Howland put Mata on the bench.

“I wish he would whack somebody in practice,” Howland said of Mata, who smiled at the suggestion.

But Mata wasn’t the only missing-in-action defender.

The Bruins rank ninth in the Pac-10 in scoring defense, eighth in field-goal percentage defense, last in blocked shots and ninth in steals.

The two disappointing losses last week weren’t all the fault of the defense. With less than a minute to go against Cal, UCLA had 40 points. The Bruins ended up losing, 64-51.

Thompson said UCLA had been surprised by Cal’s zone defense. “I guess we’ll be seeing a lot more zone now,” he said.

Thompson, who had been the conference’s second-leading scorer going into last week, had consecutive games of six points and now ranks fifth (16.7 points a game).

Howland changed his practice routine this week. Because the Bruins are playing only one game and because he felt his young team had reverted to some bad habits and needed some new lessons in zone offense, UCLA had a hard practice Monday instead of a typical afternoon of watching film and doing individual drills.

“We had a good practice [Monday],” Howland said. “I feel good about it.”

“We went real hard,” Farmar said.

The coach also implanted into his freshmen a singular message. The USC game is no bigger or smaller than any other. It is not particularly pivotal even though there is an uncomfortable sense that a season on the brink of promise is quickly degenerating into a mirror image of a year ago when the Bruins started out 9-3 and finished with a 2-14 streak.

“It’s nothing like last year,” Farmar said, “no matter what.”

But Thompson, the senior, had another view. “I’m intent on getting the win,” he said. “There’s a lot of pressure on us.”

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Howland said that of all the freshmen who were McDonald’s high school All-Americans last year, Farmar and Afflalo rank second and third in minutes played. Thompson attributes some of the team’s mini-slump to the rookies “hitting the freshman wall. It can be a little overwhelming. I don’t know any freshmen that are playing this amount of minutes.”