Bruins Must Make It to These Finals

It was a snowy night in mid-December in Ann Arbor, the college town bordering on the University of Michigan brightly decorated and in a festive mood for the holidays.

But for Jordan Farmar, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Josh Shipp and Ryan Wright, it might as well have been a classroom in Westwood, because, in effect, that’s where they were.

While their teammates on the UCLA men’s basketball team could relax after completing practice in preparation for a game the next day against Michigan, this quartet was in a hotel room taking midterm exams, the exams they would have been taking in class had they not been traveling.

It’s easy to forget sometimes that these are student-athletes. The student part can get overlooked when the NCAA tournament is going on. Watching the Bruins make it to the Sweet 16 and with a game against Gonzaga on Thursday in Oakland, it sometimes seems as if they are just younger versions of the Lakers and the Clippers, players whose full focus is on the court.

It’s Kenny Donaldson’s job to make sure the players don’t lose their focus on the class work. He is in his second year as an academic coordinator at UCLA, with the responsibility of monitoring the studies of the men’s and women’s basketball teams.

“Because of NCAA rules,” Donaldson said, “the coaches are not allowed to be in contact with the players’ professors, so that’s my job.”

It’s a job that requires a juggler, one who can balance the schedule established by the basketball coaches with the requirements of the players’ professors.

This week is especially difficult. While many schools in the NCAA tournament are on spring break, it’s finals week at UCLA. For Donaldson, that means trying to get the players to take their exams before the start of practice today, or, with a departure for Oakland scheduled for this evening, to set up time to take the exam Wednesday or Friday. Donaldson will try to work around Thursday, game day.

The Bruins will be in Oakland on Wednesday, and will still be there Friday if they beat Gonzaga, preparing for a Saturday game against the winner of the Memphis-Bradley game.

Arron Afflalo, Cedric Bozeman, Rubin Janou, Farmar and Mbah a Moute will all take tests in Oakland.

“I will ask for a room at the hotel, hopefully in a quiet area,” Donaldson said, “then set up separate tables for each student taking an exam. We want no conversation between them.”

Can the players use their textbooks? Can they refer to notes? How much time do they have to take the exam? Donaldson learns all these details in advance so that he can duplicate classroom conditions as much as possible.

There are several differences. If a player takes a test earlier than his classmates back home, the questions will be changed by the professor to avoid the temptation for a player to share the questions with those who have not taken the test. After the exams are given, Donaldson may send them by overnight mail to the professors.

Donaldson begins the process at the start of the semester. Each student is required to give their professor a travel letter, showing the departure and return date for each of UCLA’s scheduled road games.

It gets trickier, of course, in the NCAA tournament, when the Bruins don’t know for sure where they’ll be playing, or for how long, until less than a week before the start of the event. But surely, with the excitement on campus over the Bruins, who have won nine straight games, every professor knows where and when UCLA is playing?

“You’d be surprised,” Donaldson said. “Some professors are so totally focused on the academics that they don’t pay attention to how the basketball team is doing. Some professors don’t understand how the tournament works. They may not understand why they don’t receive an e-mail on where the players will be going at the start of the tournament until Monday of that week because the selections were made Sunday.”

Donaldson said the professors almost unanimously agree to work with him as long as he can approximate the player’s classroom routine.

It’s not only the professors who are looking over the student-athletes’ shoulder. Mbah a Moute, who comes from Cameroon, says his parents’ primary concern is his education. They have never seen him play basketball for the Bruins.

“My father wants me to have a 6.0 grade-point average,” Mbah a Moute said.

Told 4.0 is normally the ideal, Mbah a Moute reiterated, “He wants a 6.0.”

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Matchup

How UCLA and Gonzaga compare (through Monday):

*--* UCLA GONZAGA 68.7 POINTS 80.1 58.7 OPP. POINTS 72.5 48.3 FIELD GOAL % 47.8 41.8 OPP. FIELD GOAL % 43.2 35.6 3-PT. FIELD GOAL % 37.0 34.2 OPP. 3-PT. FG % 34.3 70.0 FREE THOW % 78.2 33.0 REBOUNDS 37.5 28.0 OPP. REBOUNDS 33.9 14.3 ASSISTS 13.9

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