Afflalo, Farmar Part-Time Bruins

By Dan Weber
The Press-Enterprise

They cut their course loads to focus on NBA pre-draft tryouts.

UCLA sophomores Arron Afflalo and Jordan Farmar became part-time students Friday in order to pursue an NBA tryout schedule.

"The NCAA requires that," Afflalo said in a telephone interview Friday, after cutting back to two classes in the spring quarter that has four weeks remaining.

Afflalo, who averaged 15.8 points a game as the NCAA-finalist Bruins' leading scorer, will do individual workouts next week starting with the Lakers and finishing up with the Cleveland Cavaliers with trips to the Indiana Pacers and Chicago Bulls in between.

"They'll have you do a lot of two-on-two, one-on-one, with a lot of drills and maybe some competition stuff," he said. "Usually they bring in no more than four guys."

Afflalo and Farmar, who plans to do no interviews until he makes his decision on officially entering the draft, have until June 18 to withdraw from the NBA Early Entrant Program they entered April 20. The NBA draft is June 28 in New York.

By maintaining their two-course class loads as part-time students and not hiring an agent, both would be eligible to return to UCLA if they withdraw by June 18.

Afflalo said he doesn't feel like much has changed.

"I'm still on campus every day, going to class, talking to the guys," he said. "The only difference is the NCAA says I can't play with the rest of the UCLA players while I'm doing this. And I'm 100 percent motivated to do this."

Afflalo said he had no further workouts with teams set up.

Saying UCLA coach Ben Howland "has definitely been helpful in all of this," Afflalo said the UCLA coaches have been the ones working with the NBA teams to set up his workout schedule.

"I could see myself coming back here next year, but right now I have another goal ahead of me," said Afflalo, who does not yet plan to attend the NBA Pre-Draft Camp June 6-10 in Orlando, Fla.

(reprinted with permission)

(BruinBasketballReport.com)