UCLA Bruins Basketball

Pre-game of UCLA-Arizona game, when the Bruins moved into 1st place.

I realize I've only made one post this entire quarter so far, so there probably is a bunch of business school-related stuff I can write about, but I rather focus this entry outside of Anderson, and talk about my first experiences with UCLA basketball.  

Back before classes began in September I bought the Den Pass for $100 which allows students to go to every UCLA football and basketball game for the rest of the season.  I'm a huge sports fan and it pays for itself over box office prices after only a couple uses, so it seemed like a no-brainer.  Unfortunately the combination of the inconvenience of getting to Pasadena to watch a mediocre to terrible football team and the packed weekly schedule I had during basketball season limited my attendance at sporting events the past few months.  In fact, as of last week I had only used the pass once (to attend part of a football game where UCLA lost 35-0 during orientation).  However, as UCLA has been one of the premeir basketball programs historically, and with Pauley Pavilion closed for renovations all of next year, I decided to take in the last two home basketball games of the season this weekend. 

So my impressions of Pauley Pavilion is that although it may be a historic venue (legendary coach John Wooden's teams went 149-2 in this building, and won 8 national championships in the first 10 years Pauley was open) that it is well overdue for a renovation.  My exposure to college basketball stadiums might be a little skewed since the only games I've been to have been at Cole Field House, Comcast Center and UVA's John Paul Jones Arena.  Comcast and JPJ are NBA-style arenas, and Cole was a pretty large venue itself.  So by comparison, Pauley felt really small and outdated.  There is no concourse, to use the restroom I had to go outside and use portapotties, and the concessions and electronic displays are all pretty limited.  But at the same time, it's hard to escape the historical aspect of the arena.  The team has been so successful over time that they only hang banners for national championships (11 in total), the court is named after Wooden, and in the games I went to there were a lot of ceremonies honoring teams of the past and the arena's history.  There has been some external construction going on for the past year or two, but next year the entire arena will be closed down as they do massive remodeling before opening the new arena for the 2012 season.  Not sure if I'll still be in LA to see that, but it was pretty cool being a part of the last game to be played at the current Pauley Pavilion. 

UCLA-Arizona State. 15 mins before tip, stadium a little empty.

As far as the gameday experience goes, I definitely got both sides of the spectrum in the two games I went to.  Thursday night's game was against last place Arizona State, and the crowd was pretty thin to say the least.  I showed up 20 minutes before tip-off and easily found some seats in the upper deck student section somewhat near mid-court.  All of the student sections filled up, but the rest of the arena was pretty lacking.  I've been told this is typical for LA weekday events (a combination of bad traffic and there being plenty of other things to do, both sport-related and not), but I was still surprised considering that UCLA is pretty good this year and it was 2nd to last home game of the season.  I was particularly surprised that when the scoreboard showed the final score of 1st place Arizona's loss that evening that there was no reaction from the crowd, which moved UCLA within 1 game of first place.

Saturday afternoon's game against first place Arizona was the complete opposite in terms of attendance and crowd energy.  Again, I showed up about 20 minutes before tip-off, but this time had to wait in a huge line outside, and then struggled mightily to find 3 seats together.  Eventually I was able to get some seats way in the upper deck corner.  My friends were running late, so the ushers started threatening to take my saved seats away, which I guess is understandable because students who showed up later than me had to hang out in the aisles and stairwells because there weren't enough seats to go around.  The stadium was definitely packed to the max, and the energy level was as high as any top ACC game I had been to.  Even way in the upper deck we stood up the entire game (a lot harder to do now that I'm an old man).  UCLA ended up beating Arizona pretty soundly to move into first place.  The last basket in Pauley Pavilion history ended up being scored by junior walk-on Tyler Trapani, which were the first points of his career.  What made this a special and somewhat poetic moment for UCLA though was that Trapani is the great-grandson of legendary coach John Wooden, who passed away at age 99 this past year.  It seemed like a very fitting way to close down the stadium, and although my experiences in the building were extremely limited, I'm glad I got to be there for the historic final day.

Joe and Josephine Bruin (featured at a football game)