LEXINGTON, Ky. — Maybe this was a microcosm of UCLA’s men’s basketball season. Impressively good at some points, frighteningly bad at others.
For around 14½ minutes Saturday night, the Bruins went toe-to-toe with the Tennessee Volunteers, the No. 7 seed in the Midwest Regional slugging it out with No. 2 in what was very much a road game in the heart of Southeastern Conference country.
It was 23-21 UCLA, after a 3-pointer by freshman Trent Perry, who was in the game largely because Eric Dailey Jr. and Skyy Clark both had two fouls a little over three minutes into the game. But the Bruins were staying with the Vols. And then they weren’t.
Tennessee outscored UCLA 11-2 in the final 3:46 of the half, blitzed the Bruins early in the second half with a slew of 3-pointers, many of them wide open, and cruised to a 67-58 victory – made that close only because of a late Bruins’ flurry – that sent them to Indianapolis and the Sweet 16, to the soundtrack of repeated renditions of “Rocky Top.”
At full volume.
This maybe shouldn’t have been totally unexpected. The Bruins (23-11) were a No. 7 seed for a reason. Throughout the season they could be impressive, sublime even, at some points, ragged and inconsistent and sometimes sputtering at others. Their misfortune Saturday night may have been to draw a really impressive Tennessee team, now 29-7, composed of experienced players who could attach the defensive clamps … and could make wide open shots.
“I think it was the press that got it started,” Clark said. “I think that killed us. With some turnovers and just some fouls, gave them easy points at the free-throw line, especially fouling the wrong person.”
Former Etiwanda High star Jahmai Mashack said the press and trapping weren’t necessarily in the original game plan.
“I think going in we have a lot of things built in but honestly we’re a team of adjustments,” he said. “So we know how to adjust. We don’t want to give every team our first look. We see how the game is flowing and how they’re handling the ball, and see if their passes are a little long or short or whatever the case may be.
“But we’re pretty good at adjusting to the situation, so it wasn’t a planned thing. You just go out and do it and try to execute perfectly.”
And once they started trapping and saw that the Bruins were a little rattled, maybe they smelled blood.
“We went into the locker room with a lot of energy,” Tennessee guard Zakai Ziegler said. “Because we knew it was going to be a dogfight going into the game, you knew it was going to be a lot of ups and downs, but the last couple of minutes in the first half we had a lot of energy. Getting turnovers and those loud plays, it really picked us up.”
That outburst at the end of the first half gave Tennessee a 32-25 lead at intermission. Clark’s 3-pointer cut Tennessee’s lead to 37-31 with 17:44 left in the game, but Chaz Lanier hit a trey from the right wing. Moments later, Jordan Gainey made a 3-pointer after a kickout pass from Ziegler, after a UCLA shot clock violation. Then Lanier made another three. Nine unanswered points in 1:53, and if it wasn’t the end, you could see it from there.
That started a 21-8 Vols run, which included additional 3-pointers by Mashack and Gainey again, for a 58-39 lead.
“The fouls, then rebounding, too,” UCLA’s Tyler Bilodeau said. “We got outrebounded and I think we didn’t stop Chaz Lanier as good as we should have. He got hot there, hit some big threes for them. But, yeah, I would say those are some of the other things.”
And then there’s this.
“Look, they’re a hell of a team,” coach Mick Cronin said. “There was a time they were No. 1 in the country, I think. (Forward Igor) Milicic’s a fourth or fifth-year guy, Lanier is a fourth or fifth-year guy, Zakai is a four-year starter, Mashack is a senior, Gainey is a senior, (Darlinstone) Dubar is a senior, Okpara is a hell of a junior.
“… We got off to a terrible start (on the glass). We were stopping them and I don’t have the first half stats but I think they had nine or ten offensive rebounds at halftime. (It was nine.) Our defense couldn’t have been much better early, but we didn’t do a good job on the glass in the first half for sure. Second half was even but the first half – it was 9-0 second-chance points at halftime. I told our guys this game was going to be won by other things: Who gets the ball when it comes off the rim, who is strong with the ball.
“They screened better than we screened.”
Maybe this was predictable as well: When you have two defensive-minded teams, led by two defensive-minded coaches, every point matters.
“Guys, they only scored 67,” Cronin said. “It’s not like we gave up 97, they scored 67. Not going to win many games (when) you get 58.”
Bruin fans can say that it’s a disappointment, and certainly the players’ demeanor in the locker room afterward confirmed that. Some players had stunned looks on their faces. Kobe Johnson, one of two seniors in the Bruins’ regular rotation, had his head in his hands and at one point put a towel over his head, discouraging any conversation.
In another sense, while losing in the second round of the tournament is not up to the program’s traditional standards, at least the Bruins got back to the tournament this year, after missing it altogether a season ago.
And while Cronin wasn’t yet ready to talk about the future, or even to disclose when he might start thinking about next season – “Not next year; not right now, guys,” he said when I asked – he gently contested the idea that the team fell short.
“Look, we restored us back to where we need to be, in the NCAA Tournament,” he said. “We had the (No.) 4 seed in the Big Ten Tournament out of 18 teams. After having almost no NIL (money) and having to go to Europe to try to find cheap players … (last season’s 16-17 finish) put us a year behind, okay?
“So I thought this group of guys did as good as they could do … You have a team where literally your four most important players are transfers. They came together and had a heck of a year.”
That brings us to how the new rhythms of college basketball affect the future. No longer can a coach or a team bank on having a certain number of returning players or a group of seniors that has built continuity. Instead, the question in the locker room tends to be, “Are you going to be back next year?”
So maybe Cronin had it right when he said this (even though he said he wasn’t going to discuss the future yet):
“Continuity is irrelevant if you don’t have talent.”
jalexander@scng.com