Staying the Course

  MINDY ROSS/ Daily Bruin Senior Staff Matt
Barnes waited two years to see significant playing time at
UCLA. The once-heralded recruit is having a breakout junior
season.

By Chris Umpierre
Daily Bruin Staff

Teammate and then-roommate Ray Young remembers the phone
calls.

He remembers hearing Matt Barnes on the phone, many times with
tears rolling down his cheek, talking to his parents about whether
he should leave UCLA.

Barnes, who came to Westwood as a blue-chip recruit, hardly
played his first two years, averaging just 13 and 14 minutes a
game, respectively. He said things got so frustrating his freshman
and sophomore years he nearly transferred on a number of
occasions.

“I’d go home at nights and cry,” he said.
“I would talk to friends and my family just wondering if I
made the right decision to come here.”

On the advice from people like Young, Barnes decided to stick it
out.

With last season’s departures of Jerome Moiso and JaRon
Rush to professional careers, Barnes has seen his minutes and
production skyrocket this year. He currently averages 29 minutes,
12 points and seven rebounds a game.

Most recently, in 35 minutes against Oregon on Saturday, he
scored a career-high 26 points and grabbed seven rebounds.

Crying on the phone is something Young knows a lot about. After
a stellar high school career, Young also didn’t get a lot of
minutes his first two years and almost transferred.

MATT BARNES BY THE NUMBERS Year Minutes Starts
Points Rebounds Freshman 13 8 4 3 Sophomore 14 1 6 3 Junior 29 13
12 7 (through 17 games) Original by CONNIE WU/Daily Bruin Senior
Staff Web Adaptation by VICKI FENG “I’ve been
there,” Young said. “I know that feeling. I’ve
called my mom crying many times: “˜Mom, I want to leave. This
isn’t the place for me; they are taking away my game.’
Matt was feeling the exact same way.

“I knew for myself that I had to stick with it and be
patient so I had to kind of preach that to him.”

Barnes, who was selected as a high school All-American by Street
& Smith magazine after averaging 30 points, 10 rebounds, and
six blocks in his senior season, said the closest he came to
transferring was on last year’s trip to Oregon.

He played a total of 20 minutes on that trip, most of it in
garbage time, and that was almost enough for him to leave the
team.

“I didn’t play at all on that trip and there was no
apparent reason,” Barnes said. “I talked to some of my
teammates. I talked to my family. My family thought I would be
better somewhere else. They thought that I should have
transferred.”

Another thing that irked Barnes was that, while he sat on the
bench at UCLA, he watched on television other players he played
well against in summer leagues leading their respective college
teams.

Former summer league teammates Carlos Boozer of Duke and
Tayshaun Prince of Kentucky blew up their first two years in
college.

While they were getting the publicity and the recognition,
Barnes was sitting and sitting.

“To come to a program and especially be as talented as
Matt is and not play for the first two years, it’s got to
hurt you,” said guard Ryan Bailey.

“Especially to see all your friends that you played with
doing well,” Bailey continued. “It’s like,
“˜Man, I was doing the same thing he was doing in high school.
Why can’t I get any playing time?'”

Barnes said he never made any official overtures to other
programs about transferring. However, he did talk to some people
unofficially, people in other Pac-10 schools.

“I know people at other schools so I never really looked
into it,” he said. “But I know if I wanted to, I could
have left. It never really got that deep. I just thought about
it.”

According to the coaching staff, there were just too many
quality players stockpiled at the forward position. On the team
during Barnes’ first two years were Moiso, Rush, Jason Kapono
and Dan Gadzuric.

Assistant Coach Jim Saia said the thought of transferring
crosses most players’ minds when they don’t get a lot
of playing time early on.

“You can only play five,” he said.
“There’s only 200 minutes to divide up. So Coach
(Steve) Lavin has difficult decisions to make to divide those
minutes up. Sometimes players are unhappy with it, which is
normal.”

While he continued to remain a fixture on the bench his first
two years, Barnes began to see the rest of his life crumble.

Unsure about his basketball future, he began to slack off in
other areas. Due to poor grades, Barnes was academically ineligible
during the fall quarter of last season. As a result, he missed the
first five games of the season.

“Basketball is my life,” he said. “When
basketball wasn’t going good, it made me not want to do
school. So I messed up in school.

“When I didn’t have basketball I really didn’t
have anything,” he continued. “It was very
hard.”

Not getting the minutes in basketball, he looked into other
options aside from transferring, such as joining the UCLA football
team. At Del Campo high school in Sacramento, Barnes had also
excelled in football, leading the nation in touchdown receptions
his senior year.

After flirting with the idea of joining the football team last
summer, Barnes decided to devote all his time to basketball.

The result has been a breakout season. He is easily UCLA’s
most improved player. In addition to developing a very potent
post-up game, Barnes’ quickness makes him impossible for
other forwards to guard on the perimeter.

Catching the ball outside the key, the versatile forward is
seemingly able to take every defender off the dribble. He gets most
of his points slashing to the basket, often getting fouled in the
process.

“To Matt’s credit, he hung in there,” Saia
said. “He knew with the departure of Moiso and Rush that
there was an opportunity here this year. He grew up and he’s
playing tremendous basketball right now. It’s a great success
story.”

Young, who played a lot with Barnes in high school summer
leagues, knew his friend would not only eventually get minutes, but
get the recognition his talent deserves.

“I’ve seen stuff nobody else on this team has seen
Matt do,” he said. “I know what his capabilities
are.”

“Good things had to come for Matt,” Young continued.
“It was just he had to be patient. That was one of the things
I told him was to be patient and everything is going to fall into
place like it’s supposed to.”

Looking back on those difficult first two years, Barnes said his
time on the bench and the tears he shed were all worth it.

“My first two years here were probably the toughest thing
I’ve ever been through,” he said. “I really feel
that it’s going to help me though. I’ve been through
all the ups and downs a person can go through as far as playing and
not playing.”

“I’m not as emotional as all the other
players,” he added, “because I’ve sat on the
bench whole games and not played three or four games in a row.
It’s going to help me out this year, next year and beyond
because the emotional phase won’t be there for me. I’ve
been through it all.”