Newman's Notes: UCLA

Cal State Fullerton falls to 5-2 after losing to No. 1-ranked UCLA at Pauley Pavilion on Tuesday night. The Titans committed a total of 28 turnovers with 27 of them coming after taking a 10-point advantage in the first five minutes of the game. Assistant coach Andy Newman offers up some perspective on the game.

Disclaimer: These notes are paraphrased from a brief conversation with coach Andy Newman. Some information may not be exact quotes but the TitanCentral.com did its best to capture the points being made:

Previous Notes
Nov. 29th, 2006	Eastern Washington
Nov. 25th, 2006	Louisiana-Lafayette
Nov. 21st, 2006	UT-San Antonio
Nov. 14th, 2006	Hope International
Nov. 7th, 2006	SDSU Scrimmage

• For 33 minutes we were right there. Defensively we played well and anytime you can be within 6 points with seven minutes left in the game against the No. 1 team in the country you have to be doing some things right.
• Guys played hard and there were definitely some positives to take away from this game. There were some negatives as well. Obviously the 28 turnovers were awful.
• Justin Burns struggled but sometimes you just have one of those nights offensively.
• The coaches talked a lot about this the next day. If we are going to continue to have this play (Justin Burns penetrating from top of key) we are either going to have to make him better at that or we won't put him in that situation anymore.
• UCLA had a good game plan. Their goal was to stop our transition game so they sent three guys back.
• On Scott Cutley: His back is getting better. The thing that hurt him most was that he hasn't practiced much lately. He is more of a penetrator but he is a much better shooter than he has shown thus far. He still needs to get in shape and lose about 10 pounds. If he can do this it will help him with his injuries (ankles are bad as well). He will be practicing this week.
• On Marcus Crenshaw not playing much in the first half: We were worried about major match-up problems on defense. If he and Bobby Brown are in the game at the same time one of them would have to cover Arron Afflalo or Josh Shipp. They actually played a lot more together than we originally planned.
• On defense: It's improving but still have a ways to go. After every game coach Burton goes through the game film and charts how each player does and how many assignments they miss. They are now accountable and it helps them understand that this is a priority.
• One takeaway from this game is we have to develop our bench. We need to get 9 or 10 guys -- in small chunks, like 2-4 minutes -- in the rotation if we are going to continue to play the style we want to play.
• Marcus Morgan didn't play because he had a knee problem which he aggravated in the last game. We will see how he responds this week.