Perhaps a moral victory?

I know, one is not supposed to be content with moral victories in spots, but I think I'll take a tiny piece of consolation from the Bruins' 77-76 loss to #4 Kansas tonight. UCLA tied it with a few seconds to go, but then a Kansas player was fouled with less than a second and made one of the shots. A lot closer than anybody expected, winnable -- UCLA seemed to have the momentum if it had gone to overtime -- and a far better performance than UCLA's two losses last week. It looks to me as if Ben Howland used the time simnce last week to prepare the Bruins better and teach them a few winning tricks -- and of course Tyler Honeycutt went ballistic with 33 points.

My hope, of course, is that these rough games before league play starts will toughen the Bruins for league play and (hopefully) beyond. I think Freshman Josh Smith will develop into a very good player. I may be a hopeless partisan, but I'm looking for the Bruins to be better -- maybe not past-glory Final Four better, but better -- very soon.