The 10-year-old program has branches in Thousand Oaks and
Huntington Beach. It features three AAU teams, as well as
the traveling team of former college players that plays exhibitions
against NCAA teams.
Gottlieb's Branch West Basketball Academy
also takes second billing to his wife's interior design company
on their home office answering machine.
"She's the boss," Gottlieb
said.
The roster constantly shifts, but Wednesday's
edition of Branch West (the name pays homage to his father's
New York Ford dealership, Branch Motors), featured Gottlieb's
son Doug, the point guard on the Oklahoma State team that
went to the Elite Eight in 2000, and Horacio Llamas, who played
28 NBA games with the Phoenix Suns. Against the Bruins, they
were led by former Quinnipiac scorer Nate Poindexter, who
had 21 points and 12 rebounds. Llamas had 15 points and 10
rebounds and Gottlieb made all six of his shots, including
four three-pointers, for 16 points.
Branch West made 52.5% of its shots,
14 of 25 from three-point range. Exhibition teams often have
hectic travel schedules -- Branch West arrived at the arena
at 6:30 for a 7 p.m tipoff against Mississippi State and wound
up losing by 20 -- but Gottlieb made sure his team had three
days off before facing the Bruins.
"We knew UCLA was going to be
a special game for us," Gottlieb said.
"Then we caught a hot hand. We
shot the lights out. There weren't too many teams that were
going to beat us."
Especially a team that featured six
players making their first appearances in UCLA uniforms. It's
a team that's short on veterans. It has only two seniors,
Kapono and Ray Young, and Young redshirted last season. Junior
T.J. Cummings has started only seven games.
"I think this still is going to
be a damn good UCLA team," Gottlieb said. "My only
concern from Steve's point of view is ... talent but inexperience.
They don't have enough juniors and seniors that are going
to be key players. You define a team by its junior and senior
class, not its freshman and sophomore class."
He could see that inexperience show
in Dijon Thompson, who showed flashes last year that he has
it.
"He's going to be a top-flight
player," Gottlieb said. "He still looks like he's
not ready in terms of self-confidence. He turned down a couple
of open shots that, if he were a mature, confident player,
he would not turn down."
He liked the big kids, 6-foot-11 Michael
Fey and Ryan Hollins, even though they scored only two points
apiece and Fey grabbed two rebounds.
"I think Fey is one of the big
keys," Gottlieb said. "They really need his size
and rebounding and inside presence. How fast he comes is going
to be the key to their season."
"Hollins has tremendous upside.
He's probably a little more away."
The only good thing for the Bruins
is that inexperience diminishes with every game. The freshmen
will practically be sophomores, the sophomores nearly juniors
by the time the NCAA tournament rolls around. That's when
Lavin's teams tend to peak and make it all seem better, anyway.
Gottlieb had to go. His flight was
about to leave for his team's next game, against Marshall
in West Virginia today.
The Bruins don't leave the state until
they face Duke at Indianapolis later this month. Even before
they get to the treacherous part of a schedule that Lavin
called the toughest since he got here, they have a long way
to go.
"It may get worse before it gets
better," Lavin said. "The whole idea is, come March,
we could be a dangerous team. You just don't know until you
actually start playing the games. That's what's good about
finding out as soon as possible where the deficiencies lie.
Sometimes the bottom falls out [during the season] and there's
not enough time to patch it up."
Lavin used a lot of sailing metaphors.
But it might be easiest to sum it by saying the ship's taking
on water ... and it hasn't even left the dock.
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