Young players surprise fans with energy

By Dylan Hernandez
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

They had all had their abilities questioned at some point, given
up on even by the most ardent of Bruin supporters. Their own fans
used to gasp whenever they touched the ball or when they were
inserted into the game by UCLA head coach Steve Lavin.

Yet, here were Cedric Bozeman, T.J. Cummings, Ryan Walcott,
Dijon Thompson and Andre Patterson ““ the five youngest
players in the Bruin rotation ““ in the national spotlight,
against No. 13 Oregon, in their regular-season finale, on Senior
Day, drawing the loudest roar any of them had ever heard from the
usually tranquil audience at Pauley Pavilion.

They were no longer boys, unaware, confused, passive and
intimidated by the aura of big-time college basketball.

They were getting stops, digging their team out of the pit the
seniors had dug on Senior Day.

“You didn’t want them to leave UCLA with a
loss,” Walcott said.

And when Bozeman hit a three pointer with 10 minutes and two
seconds to go in the second half, the decibel level in Pauley
Pavilion reached a season high, matched perhaps only during the
Bruins’ upset win of No. 1 Kansas and last-second victory
over USC. The seniors on the bench all stood, waving their towels
and pumping their fists. The crowd, which had been chanting
“Thank-you-seniors!” before the game were now screaming
“Let’s-go-freshman!” in unison.

“Naw, I’ve never heard it this loud,” Bozeman
said. “It’s the first time I’ve heard it like
that.”

“It was beautiful, man,” added Cummings. “It
got me right down inside. It was great. We had been through a
lot.”

The four freshmen and one sophomore entered the contest as a
unit with a little more than 14 minutes to go in the game. At the
time they went in, the Bruins trailed 45-40, but they leveled the
score at 51 with 7:29 to go.

“We were just trying to play defense, just trying to make
stops,” Walcott said. “When you do that, Pauley can get
very loud.”

“What the freshmen brought was an energy we couldn’t
match,” Oregon head coach Ernie Kent said.

It was their defense that allowed the Bruins to make their
surge. Quicker than their elders seated on the UCLA bench, the
youngsters prevented Oregon from penetrating and disturbed the
Ducks’ rhythm.

But there were other signs to be encouraged about.

Bozeman, who forfeited his starting position so that senior Rico
Hines could be on the court at the start of the game, showed he is
a Rolls Royce of point guards, a superb ball handler with uncanny
timing and intuition. Although the box score indicates Bozeman
registered only three points and one assist, he dictated the tempo
of the contest while he was in.

Cummings shed the label of “me-me-me” he had branded
on his forehead earlier this season, eliminating the forced shots
and concentrating on rebounding and defense. He finished with two
points and five rebounds in 16 minutes.

Walcott, who re-entered the game during the final stretch, was
gutsy enough to take the Bruins’ final shot, a three-pointer
which flew off the back of the rim with time expiring in its
eventual 65-62 defeat.

Patterson, the human pogo stick plugged in at the four spot,
forced the Ducks to alter their shots.

Thompson, though still nursing a sore knee and still turnover
prone, showed increased awareness on defense, switching well within
the Bruin defensive zone.

“They’re not your average freshmen,” Oregon
guard Frederick Jones said. “They’re McDonalds
All-Americans. They had a lot of energy and really brought it to
us.”