March 8, 2007

March Madness heats up this week with the Pac-10 Tournament. It is expected to be one of the most competitive tournaments in the short history of the event.

In addition to the team accolades UCLA has garnered this season, individual awards have also been announced. Junior guard Arron Afflalo is this year's Pac-10 Player of the Year. Sophomore guard Darren Collison also received All-Pac-10 honors with teammates Josh Shipp and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute receiving honorable mention.

Head Coach Ben Howland was written up in yesterday's New York Times Magazine. The article, which called UCLA "the most glamorous post in college basketball", spoke of the commitment to excellence that Coach Howland and his staff have. One quote from the piece summed up Howland's acumen this way, "He's like a gifted trader on Wall Street," says Barry Rohrssen, a former assistant of Howland's at Pitt and now the head coach at Manhattan College. "Everyone has the same screen and information in front of them, but the upper-echelon guys see something different. That's Ben. He sees things no one else can see."

Kudos and accolades are also in order for the 6th-ranked UCLA gymnastics team, who beat 2nd-ranked and defending back-to-back national champions, Georgia yesterday at Pauley Pavilion. "The effort reminded me a lot of our first national championship team back in 1997," head coach Valorie Kondos-Field told me. "We may not have been the most talented team in the field that year, but we just kept on fighting and staying in position as other teams made mistakes. The same thing happened yesterday."

Incidentally, the members of the 1997 championship team, Kondos-Field's first of five national championship teams, were in attendance at Pauley Pavilion yesterday for a 10th anniversary reunion.

Thank you again for all that you do to make us better. Enjoy March Madness!