Small missteps and lack of discipline by the men's basketball team lead to big losses

Missing the bus is a bad thing.

When you’re 8 years old, it means your mom has to be late to work to take you to elementary school.

When you’re coming home from Dodger Stadium late at night, it means having to call someone to come pick you up in one of the sketchiest parts of town (that’s hypothetical, of course).

When you’re the most important player on a basketball team with no margin for error, it can be a silver lining on an opening-round conference tournament victory.

UCLA’s 55-40 win over USC on Wednesday wasn’t all that encouraging, for a lot of reasons: the Bruins only had 22 points at halftime and often looked sluggish and sloppy against the Trojans, who would lose to the first five guys you pull out of Wooden Center.

But the biggest face-palm moment of the afternoon had to do with Joshua Smith. The sophomore center was suspended for the first half of the game because he missed the team bus to the arena.

Sure, he was able to make it on foot ““ the team hotel is across the street from the Staples Center ““ but that fact isn’t relevant. The lack of discipline is.

It seems like an easy mistake to make, and I hate to harp on the big guy. But UCLA wants to be considered an elite program, one that occupies the same tier of the Dukes, the Kansases and the North Carolinas, and you never hear about players from those programs missing their team buses.

Sure, the issue proved to be moot ““ Smith entered the game in the second half, and the Bruins stretched a one-point halftime lead into a relatively comfortable victory. Still, this is a team that can’t afford even the smallest slip-ups. What if a similar circumstance happens against Arizona today? Or Washington in a potential semifinal game? Unfortunately, these guys don’t have the talent or the depth to afford personnel losses due to silly mental lapses.

And yet, as Aragorn says in “The Lord of the Rings,” “there is always hope.” In its quarterfinal matchup with Arizona, UCLA will benefit from the absence of Josiah Turner, whom the Wildcats suspended indefinitely earlier this week.

Now that we’re deeper into March, the name of the game is survive and advance. Usually that’s said in the context of the NCAA tournament, when a team narrowly avoids a first-round upset and can quickly recover and regain its form for the successive games.

That process necessitates that players and coaches put their mistakes behind them, that they acknowledge their wrongdoings and make changes without dwelling too heavily on them.

It’s a process that the Bruins can apply both on the court and off. Survive a tournament game and move on the next one, under the condition that you fix the problems.

The program’s been hit with its fair share of disciplinary issues over the last few weeks as well. To survive as a healthy and thriving program, they need to take the mistakes they’ve made, analyze them, correct them and move forward.

The buses are leaving for the Dance, and no one wants to be left behind.

If you can’t legally admit some of the things you did on a junior high school bus, email Eshoff at [email protected].