LEXINGTON, Ky. — It would be easy to say the road now gets harder for the UCLA men’s basketball team, now that 10th-seeded Utah State has been vanquished and No. 2 seed Tennessee awaits the Bruins on Saturday night in the second round of the NCAA Tournament’s Midwest Regional.
But that would almost imply that there’s a point when the road wasn’t a grind for the Bruins. Instead, it has been a fight for every inch of progress during the program’s first season in the Big Ten Conference, with multiple road trips to the Eastern and Central time zones and many, many hours spent on planes.
Want evidence? By the time these two games in the Bluegrass country are concluded and the Bruins return to Westwood, their air miles will have surpassed an estimated 32,400. And if UCLA (22-7) knocks off the Vols and qualifies for the Sweet 16 in Indianapolis, add another 3,620 miles for their fourth round trip to Indiana this season.
Are they used to it? Have the multiple trips to the East maybe enabled the players – who, after all, do most of the heavy lifting – to get used to the process physically?
“I would ask them,” Coach Mick Cronin said. “I’m hoping so. I think so, a little bit.”
UCLA made one cross-country trip in December, to New York (6,414 miles round trip) to play North Carolina. The conference schedule included road games at Washington (1,908) and Oregon (1,476) – familiar trips from the Bruins’ Pac-12 days – along with a single game at Nebraska (2,482) and multi-game trips to Maryland and Rutgers (5,170), Illinois and Indiana (5,406) and Purdue and Northwestern (3,728), as well as last week’s Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis (3,620) and this week’s regional (3,804 round trip between LAX and Lexington).
“It is unique,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said. “I’d like to someday talk to all those guys from the Pac-12, how they handled all the travel this year and vice versa, the Big Ten going out there. That’s a lot of traveling going on.”
But, forward Tyler Bilodeau said, “I think it’s been good for us, we’re used to it. So I think coming into (Saturday) you know, we’re used to being on the Eastern Time zone and all that, not as many fans there, being far from L.A. So, yeah, we’re definitely used to it, ready to go.”
In retrospect, Cronin wasn’t terribly shaken up about last week’s one-and-done against Wisconsin in the conference tournament quarterfinals, because it gave his team a couple of extra days of rest.
Normally, the Bruins leave the day before a game to reduce missed class time. This week they had to get here a day early for the public workouts and media obligations that come with the NCAA Tournament.
“I don’t know if you (can) say easier, but you have a little time – you get that day to adjust, which we had on Wednesday,” Cronin said. “You just can’t do that (leave a day early) at UCLA. Academics are too important. And … it’s a two-game road trip in our conference, we do three of those. We’re already missing too much class, so you can’t add to it.”
One difference this week? Usually, UCLA has its own charter. For the tournament, the NCAA pays for transportation but also supplies the planes. In this case, as Cronin described it, it seems to be the difference between luxury in the skies and the flight equivalent of a school bus.
“We’re pretty spoiled,” Cronin said. “So when we got our own situation that we charter, we have Wi-Fi, and the seats actually have padding. And we have big-time meals and there’s drinks everywhere, and the people serving us love us and they know us. Not the same on the NCAA plane … you get one small bag of stale pretzels, and you can’t ask for a drink until an hour into the flight or you get reprimanded.”
(Let’s hope Mick doesn’t get his knuckles rapped for that. The man just might be the best quote in college basketball, all levels.)
Oh, and there’s this UCLA tradition: Thanks to the quarter system, final exams invariably occur at some point during the NCAA Tournament, which makes you wonder how UCLA teams won so many of them back in the day. And no, players are not allowed or encouraged to take them when they get back to L.A. Proctors accompany the team on the road and exams are administered on-site.
You’d think that the NCAA, in its promotional ads, would find a way to highlight that: “Look, here are players from a traditional basketball power taking their final exams amid March Madness! See, they really are student-athletes.”
Amid all of that, there is basketball to be played. Tennessee is 28-7 and has two players up for national defensive player of the year honors in Zakai Ziegler, a 5-foot-9 senior guard from Long Island, and Jahmai Mashack, a 6-4 guard who played alongside former Bruin (and current Minnesota Timberwolves guard) Jaylen Clark at Etiwanda High. And 6-10, 245-pound junior forward Felix Okpara has a 7-2 wingspan and has blocked 60 shots with three games of four blocks.
Okpara well could be matched up with UCLA’s 7-3 Aday Mara much of the time, although Igor Milicic Jr. is also 6-10 but listed at 225. Playing against the smaller guys – and most of them are – is a challenge, Mara said.
“You’ve got to be, like, ready, and also be quicker because they’re faster,” Mara said. “Once I get the ball or I’m closer to the basket, it’s easier. but getting into the paint or getting closer to the basket is always harder, because they try to push me in my legs, or it’s just more complicated because their center of gravity is lower, so it’s easier for them to move.”
As for the sinus infection that Mara has been playing with, and that he played through, in a game-changing 20 minutes on Thursday night against Utah State? Not a problem.
“I mean, it’s just a little bit harder to breathe,” he said. “But it’s good. It’s good.”
jalexander@scng.com