Basketball season just in time to squelch sports burnout

I love this time of year.

The quarter is half over, and though burnout is setting in, the
end is in sight. And with holidays galore approaching, time-off
galore is approaching, too.

But perhaps the best part of mid-fall is the long-awaited start
of basketball season.

For one thing, it’s a breath of fresh air for sports fans
who know burnout happens in more areas than academics alone. Like
in football.

Don’t get me wrong. Football is a great sport.

But we all pretty much know how the rest of the season is going
to turn out for the Bruins.

And the only remaining game that matters anything to a lot of us
at this point is the Dec. 4 matchup with our Trojan friends in the
southern and central part of the city.

Not that the odds look so good for our West Side team.

But now there’s basketball to divert our attention.

Basketball to heal the wounds left by football losses like
Saturday’s last-minute fall to Washington State.

Basketball to restore our faith in UCLA’s prowess.

Granted, everything I know about this year’s men’s
basketball team is based on what I saw Friday night when the Bruins
took on the Simon Fraser Clan.

(Yes, the name conjures up images of people drinking poisoned
Kool-Aid somewhere. But rest assured it’s a team.)

Yet even despite such a narrow viewpoint, I’m fully
prepared to predict that UCLA will be the NCAA champion when April
rolls around.

OK, so maybe I’m drinking some of that Kool-Aid.

But at the very least, the team should end up with a record
that’s not embarrassing by any means.

In any case, I seriously am thinking of naming one of my future
children “Ben Howland” for the Bruin coach’s
bringing in what appears to be an amazing recruit class and for
overseeing returning players’ marked improvement from last
season.

Or at the very least, I might build a small shrine to freshmen
Arron Afflalo, Jordan Farmar, Lorenzo Mata and Josh Shipp.

Still, the practical (boring) side of me knows it’s way
too early to tell anything at all about the potential outcome of
the season, even if first impressions seem to be quite
promising.

After all, this year’s Bruins have played only one game.
Against an NAIA team from a school with which I’m sure not
too many people are familiar. Against a team from Canada ““
not Brazil, as I heard one guy say Friday.

(It was probably the same guy who sat behind me at the game and
made jokes about Canadians the whole time. One of my favorites:
“How do you say “˜you suck’ in Canadian?” I
wanted to turn around and say, “You suck,” but I was
afraid he’d miss the double meaning.)

So we have the next two months of prep time ahead of us before
conference play starts to see the whole of what Howland has brought
to the table after a year of work in Westwood.

Then we’ll know whether we should welcome the Pac-10 with
open arms or start reminiscing about the John Wooden years to
remind ourselves that this school had basketball glory days.

Regardless, a 97-48 win in the UCLA season opener does a lot to
quell the fears of a repeat performance of last year’s 11-17
record.

For now, though, the Bruins, for all we know, are on fire. And
I, for one, am eager to see what they can burn down in the next
five months.

Friday marks the one-year anniversary of Howland’s
signing of Afflalo, Farmar, Mata and Shipp. E-mail Looper at
[email protected] to tell him what you’re going to do to
celebrate.