The Big 2024-2025 UCLA Men's Basketball Season Preview

Mick Cronin changed directions in a hurry this offseason, and now we see whether that change paid off or not.

This year’s team has plenty of new faces like Tyler Bilodeau and Trent Perry, but still has some Cronin veterans like Lazar Stefanovic. (Photo credit: @UCLAMBB)

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It has been a good amount of time since I last wrote about UCLA Bruins men’s basketball. The last time I wrote about this program specifically was way back in March, when I was writing the post-mortem about one of the more disappointing seasons in recent UCLA history.

I was thinking about how I was going to approach this year’s preview (and, spoiler alert, I waited until after attending the exhibition game to write most of this so I could have a better idea of this team), and something stuck out in the post-mortems from last year. I had a list of players I thought would still be around, and a list of what UCLA would likely target in the transfer portal. As usual, it turns out I was fairly close to being correct here! The only miss that I thought would stay was Jan Vide, who ultimately transferred to Loyola Marymount, while every position I thought Cronin would try to address was, in fact, right on the money. On paper, this UCLA team feels like a clear upgrade, with a lot of veteran players that have produced at this level compared to a host of unknowns. But I was confident last year’s team would adjust quickly to the college game, and we all know how that turned out.

This year’s team has plenty of preseason hype. The team has a preseason ranking of #22 in both the AP and Coaches Poll, a sign of the respect the UCLA brand has rebuilt under Mick Cronin and of the perceived quality of the players brought in this season. The Big Ten media similarly think highly of this year’s UCLA squad, grabbing third place in the Big Ten preseason media poll with a few first-place votes to go with it. There are plenty of reasons for optimism with this team, as this team has a much higher floor than last year’s youthful squad. But I’m sure plenty of fanbase members are a bit more wary of a team of new faces following last year.

So let’s break this down as usual, talk about who is gone (a lot of people) who is in (a lot more people) who returned (more than expected!) and what to expect this coming season.

Who’s Gone

• Adem Bona

• Kenneth Nwuba

• Berke Buyuktuncel

• Ilane Fibleuil

• Will McClendon

• Jan Vide

UCLA saw six departures from last year’s team, one less than the previous year. Unlike the departures after 2023, only two of these have left college athletics - Kenneth Nwuba graduated and Adem Bona is off playing for the Philadelphia 76ers as a depth center currently (which is not a great sign that he can’t see the court while the 76ers are without Embiid, but I digress).

The other four players transferred out, and as I said at the end of last season none of them is particularly surprising. As stated, Jan Vide transferred to Loyola Marymount, where he will have a spot filling in for the departed Dominick Harris (and given that Harris is now at UCLA, you could easily see this as a player swap to allow Vide to develop before potentially returning to the fold). Will McClendon never seemed to get his athleticism back after his knee injury, but at San Jose State he should have an easier time compared to playing power conference athletes on a nightly basis. Berke Buyuktuncel is the most interesting transfer name, as he ended up at Nebraska and will be fighting for rotation minutes. Ilane Fibleuil, in maybe the most unsurprising move, ended up moving back to France to play professional ball; his game always seemed more suited for the FIBA style than the US college or professional game.

Who’s Back

• Dylan Andrews

• Sebastian Mack

• Lazar Stefanovic

• Brandon Williams

• Aday Mara

• Devin Williams

Ready for the interesting stuff? The returning group includes four of UCLA’s starters from last year and a rotational big, and only one of them is in line to start this year. That’s not to discount the growth of this group, but Mick Cronin clearly recognized he threw them into the deep end too quickly and is adjusting to allow them to grow more naturally.

The big returner is Dylan Andrews, who will slot in at the starting point guard spot. Andrews growth last year was a major positive for the program, going from a jittery, unconfident guard to the guy who would regularly drive play for the Bruins on both ends, bringing elite on-ball defense at the point of attack with an electric mix of downhill and outside game on offense. The construction of the new roster will take some of the responsibility off of his plate offensively, which should be a good thing and allow him to pick his spots better, and there is enough depth behind him that he should feel confident being more aggressive on the defensive end. Andrews has the ceiling of an All-Conference player, and it would not shock me to see him there.

Sebastian Mack is an interesting name to ponder in this new world, for reasons that will become clear when we get to the new names. Mack was inconsistent in his first year, which should be unsurprising for a true freshman who had a lot of the offensive load put on his shoulders. His drives into the paint evolved from courageous to an issue as the season progressed, though he did show a bit of an outside shot by the end of it. Again, he is a player who should benefit from a reduced role that can allow him to focus on doing a few things right.

Lazar Stefanovic will similarly see a reduced role, but he’s the kind of veteran you want on the team when many new names come in. He’s well-respected by the locker room, knows exactly what Cronin wants, and can help the others adapt to the system. More importantly for this season, Stefanovic won’t be asked to do things he is unsuited for on offense, and will simply be in the game as a catch-and-shoot threat from distance, which he showed to be excellent at late in the season.

Aday Mara is a fascinating returner for me. The lone Euro to stay on from last year, Mara has the size and length that most coaches dream of having to go with a pretty solid feel for passing. I’d also point out that, of all the Euros that came to UCLA last year, Mara was by far the one that took to college life the best, constantly appearing at other UCLA sporting events and to any on-campus activity involving athletics. The knock on Mara last year was that he was not strong enough to bang around with the bigger American posts, and his lateral quickness left him as a target defensively. It says a lot about Mara’s mental makeup that he chose to stick around and develop after last offseason, and he has added more muscle while looking quicker in his step. I still don’t know if he will see a ton of minutes, but if he continues to develop and can get to 10+ minutes a game, that would be a huge boost for the team.

I will offer a mea culpa here for Brandon Williams; last year I figured he would redshirt, but he ended up starting the vast majority of UCLA games. I don’t see that happening this year given the players brought in, but Williams could definitely compete for minutes while he finally gets the chance to develop more naturally.

Devin Williams will, however, absolutely be redshirting this year, or at least should be. Last year he played in enough games to burn the redshirt, but I think UCLA is much deeper at the 4/5 compared to last year.

Incoming Players (Transfers)

• Tyler Bilodeau

• Kobe Johnson

• Skyy Clark

• Dominick Harris

• Eric Dailey Jr.

• William Kyle III

This list is a huge upgrade in terms of talent, athleticism, and experience compared to what the team had last year, with Eric Dailey being the lone transfer to have not played multiple seasons at the college level.

Let’s start with Tyler Bilodeau, who will likely be the lead scorer on this team when all is said and done. Bilodeau is an absolute bucket, with a skilled inside game and the range to shoot out to the three-point line. The exhibition game gave a pretty good indication of how Cronin wants to use Bilodeau, with the wing getting the ball down low repeatedly en route to scoring 24 points on 9-11 shooting in 21 minutes. Bilodeau may falter a bit on the defensive end, and it’s where he’ll need to develop more to reach his true Jaime Jaquez potential, but he is at least a willing defender and Cronin has brought in a bevy of good defensive options to help cover for Bilodeau’s shortcomings.

Speaking of good defensive options, here’s Kobe Johnson, aka the only player on the last few Southern Cal teams you could see fitting in well under Cronin. Johnson is making the short drive across the 10 freeway to play for Cronin this year, and Cronin has spent a lot of the offseason comparing him favorably to National Defensive Player of the Year Jaylen Clark. I don’t think Johnson will necessarily reach the heights of Clark’s disruptive tendencies, but he is a tenacious defender who can guard up and down the lineup. Johnson does have a leg up on Clark on the offensive end, where he is by far a better offensive player than Clark. He is a solid if unspectacular three-point shooter, but his shooting and unselfish play stand out on that end; Johnson only took five shots in 28 minutes last Wednesday, but he also led the team with 11 assists and constantly put the team in a good position offensively. Johnson feels like he will be the workhorse of the team in the way Jaquez often was, and if he can keep out of foul trouble will likely lead the team in minutes.

I’m going to talk about Eric Dailey here as well because he went from a player that I figured Cronin wanted to develop as a depth piece so that he could become a bigger piece in 2025-2026, but as the exhibition showed Dailey may be hard to keep off the court this year. It is not that he is a tremendous scorer - he had 11 points on 5-6 shooting and can hit from multiple levels of the court - but that he just does so many things on both ends. He is a very good defender who uses his size and athleticism well and appears to be an excellent rebounder. The thing you have to like about him the most is his motor and the fact that he always looks like he’s giving 110% effort at all times.

At the post spot, Cronin brought in William Kyle III to act as an Adem Bona substitute. Let’s face it, replacing what Bona brought to the team was always going to be hard to do, and while I think Kyle has plenty of the athletic ability to do a good Bona impression, the exhibition did leave me a bit more worried about whether he will hold up over an entire season against improved talent. The offensive game for Kyle is a little more refined than Bona’s was, but it won’t be a focal point of the offense, and I’m more at a point where I’m hoping Kyle can provide 10+ minutes of solid play and grow into the role.

At guard, there is a major influx of shooting and playmaking, starting with Skyy Clark, who was long a Cronin favorite when he was a high school recruit and finally made his way to Westwood this last offseason cycle. Clark will likely end up as the biggest risk/reward player on the roster this year; he has plenty of playmaking ability and a solid, if a bit streaky, stroke from the outside, but has been turnover-prone at times at his previous two stops and is not the greatest defender, being on the smaller side for a D1 guard. Clark got the start at off-guard in the exhibition and seems to have the early line on that spot going forward, but given that he is likely stepping into the backup point guard role, there may be a point where he gets taken out of the starting lineup to focus more on that.

The other incoming transfer guard is an intriguing name in Dominick Harris. Harris originally started at Gonzaga as a five-star recruit but could not crack the rotation and transferred to Loyola Marymount, where he turned himself into one of the best three-point shooters in the country. Harris has solid athleticism and has proven an ability to put the ball on the ground and drive when teams close out hard on him, so it will be interesting to see if, or when, he takes over the other starting guard spot opposite Dylan Andrews. Interestingly enough, Harris ended up deep on the bench during the exhibition, so we’ll see if that is just a one-off occurrence or a sign that Harris is struggling with something in practice and Cronin is sending a message.

Incoming Players (High School)

• Trent Perry

• Eric Freeny

Even with all of the incoming transfers, UCLA is still bringing in a few high school prospects. I’ll mention Eric Freeny quickly here because I’m expecting him to redshirt this year, but he has already shown a ton of the traits that make a great Cronin player, with a relentless drive and competitiveness. If we end up seeing a ton of Freeny this year, he’s either made himself impossible to keep off the court, or something terrible has gone wrong with this team and he’s being pressed into service.

Trent Perry, however, is a fascinating name for this team. For those unfamiliar with the journey Perry has taken, I’ll summarize it here: Perry was initially committed to Southern Cal despite a heavy push from Cronin, but when Andy Enfield beat the posse out of town and went to SMU, Perry was able to get out of his letter of intent and reopened his recruitment. UCLA was on Perry immediately and became the frontrunner for his services, with one small problem: UCLA did not have an open scholarship available for Perry. This is where the brand-new world of NIL comes into play, as UCLA figured out a way to put Perry on scholarship and transfer one of their older players off of scholarship but with an NIL deal that essentially pays for school and then some. It speaks to the financial power that UCLA is wielding with their basketball NIL that they could pull off this kind of heist and end up with 14 scholarship players.

As for Perry himself, he’s pretty darn good. Perry led Harvard-Westlake to two straight California Open Division championships and won Gatorade California Player of the Year honors to boot. Perry is an exceptional point guard with a great feel for the game and great passing ability, which helps him get by with only above-average athleticism. At the high school level, he displayed an elite shot from midrange and deep, and the hope is that can translate to the next level. The exhibition did show that Perry’s defense will be a work in progress, but the talent is intriguing enough that I think Cronin will look to acclimate him throughout the nonconference slate as much as possible.

Team Preview

One of the more interesting aspects of this team is that there is no true star on it. Mick Cronin’s teams in past years have had their fair share of bright lights, from Jaime Jaquez to Johnny Juzang to Adem Bona last year, but this year’s team does not have that singular talent. That is not to say that one won’t emerge as the season progresses, but that lack of headlining talent will be interesting to watch as the season develops.

Let’s start with the defensive end because, at the end of the day, this is a Mick Cronin team that is going to live and die by how it plays defense. Now, last year’s team ended up being fairly decent on that end, finishing ranked 50th in KenPom’s defensive efficiency, but still not nearly as good as past Cronin teams. I’m fairly confident that this year’s squad will improve on those numbers and be closer to the Jaquez/Clark squad on that end.

The easiest case for optimism on the defensive end is that the Bruins simply upgraded the athleticism from last year. UCLA will get major defensive improvements from the three and four spots in the lineup, especially with the insertion of Kobe Johnson, who gives the team an elite wing stopper to match up with the elite guard defense provided by Dylan Andrews. Having those two (and likely Eric Dailey at the four) will allow Cronin to hide some weaker defenders like Skyy Clark and Tyler Bilodeau, while the bench will have improved defensive options at multiple positions from what the team got last year. And, with a deeper bench than last year, Cronin has more options defensively, including the ability to press that was lacking last year. Based on the exhibition against Cal State LA, the press still needs some work, especially given how many open looks Cal State LA was able to generate against the press, but if Cronin can get that press locked in, it will provide a huge tool for the team to throw a change-up at opponents.

Offensively, I think we can safely put to bed any speculation that Cronin will move away from the iso-heavy attacks that keyed the Jaquez/Juzang teams. Last year, I assumed that Cronin would shift his offensive system to account for the lack of singular one-on-one talent on the roster, but that was not what happened; instead, we were treated to a bevy of Adem Bona post-ups and Sebastian Mack drives. As the season progressed UCLA showed some better offensive concepts, but the lack of consistent outside shooting did them in.

So do I think this year will be better offensively? Yeah, for a host of reasons, starting with the fact that Cronin does have the one-on-one talent that he craves this season, starting with Bilodeau, who is a bucket-getter. Bilodeau will likely be employed similarly to how Cronin used Jaquez by isolating him on the side and making defenses decide if they want to throw an extra defender at him or not. Cronin also has some options at the guard spot. Skyy Clark can be an electric scorer with the ball in his hands, but Cronin also has two options that developed over the course of last year in Dylan Andrews and Sebastian Mack. Andrews was nigh-unguardable over the second half of the season, showing off increased confidence in his ability to get to the basket and an excellent pull-up free throw jumper game modeled after his mentor and UCLA great Darren Collison. For all the flaws, Sebastian Mack did improve throughout the season when it came to getting to the basket and making a positive play. It wasn’t always pretty, but Mack can get hot playing in the second unit, and his passing ability has improved to the point where he looks like a solid playmaker on offense.

What will also help the offense this year is the influx of shooting ability. Only Lazar Stefanovic proved to be a consistent outside shooter last year, hitting 39% of his three-point shots last year, but between Dominick Harris, Skyy Clark, Kobe Johnson, Eric Dailey, and even Bilodeau, UCLA has an influx of shooters that have hit at least 35% from distance in their careers. Throw in some improvement from Andrews and Mack and this team should have plenty of outside shooting to force opposing defenses to respect the shooting and open things up on the interior.

But all of this avoids the true question that needs to be answered: how will minutes be allocated on a team with essentially 14 scholarship players?

Let’s assume that, at the very least, Devin Williams and Eric Freeny will redshirt this year. That leaves 400 game minutes to divide between 12 players. Outside of Andrews, Bilodeau, and Johnson, those minutes seem entirely up for grabs, and the permutations Cronin can throw at teams seem endless. In the exhibition, we got a starting lineup that put Bilodeau at the five next to Eric Dailey, with Skyy Clark taking the other starting guard spot, and while this lineup looked solid and will likely be the initial lineup we see against Rider, there are questions about whether Bilodeau can hold up at the five against bigger teams, or whether Clark can do the same at the guard spot. Can William Kyle III and Aday Mara provide 20+ minutes of post play a game? Does Dominick Harris get out of the doghouse to make a major impact? What does Sebastian Mack or Trent Perry bring to the table this year? Does Brandon Williams make an appearance? A lot of questions to be answered here.

Expectations

So, when I looked over last year’s expectations, it became pretty clear how badly the team missed both the general expectations and the personal ones I laid out. For the general expectations, the team only managed to end up in the top 75 on defense; they finished the non-conference slate under .500 and finished 5th in the conference, a disappointing end to the Pac-12 era. I was clearly way more bullish on the offense going into last season, something that definitely won’t happen this year, but even beyond that, the team did not even come close to meeting these expectations.

But that’s also why I make expectations and not predictions for basketball. There are too many games and variables to come even close to guessing what will happen in each game. Thus, we go with expectations here. The idea is that, if UCLA were to meet these expectations, they likely will have had a successful season. I’ll also throw in some higher-level expectations after which would be indicative of a great season. You’ll notice that none of these expectations are “win a national championship”, because it is 2024 and I’m a realist about the current college basketball landscape, where expecting a national championship every year is a fool’s errand.

Let’s start with the baseline expectations:

• UCLA needs to win one of its three marquee non-conference games. With matchups against Arizona, North Carolina, and Gonzaga, the Bruins have the opportunity to make some early noise before heading into conference play, and I think a more veteran team like UCLA can win at least one of these three games. Of the three, Arizona seems like the hardest one (not because Arizona is necessarily the best team, but because they always look like world beaters in the early going before fading late in the season) but North Carolina and Gonzaga have some exploitable weaknesses.

• Top 50 offense and defense per KenPom. Last year I put the expectation at 75 for each because it was a young team, and while they hit one of those two marks, the offense was poor all season and the Bruins never had a chance. This year’s team is more athletic and has more consistent shooting, so I think setting the expectations higher is appropriate.

• Top Four ranking in the Big Ten. From what I understand of their postseason tournament, getting into the top four would automatically put UCLA into the quarterfinals and prevent them from playing at least one extra game (two extra if they finish 7th or lower). I think the Big Ten in general will get a sizeable number of teams into the tournament just based on prestige, but for UCLA to get a higher seed in the tournament, they likely need a good showing here to secure that spot.

• Top four seed line in the tournament, get to the Sweet 16. As usual, the NCAA Tournament is a crapshoot past the Sweet 16, so getting to that point would give the Bruins a chance, and the best way to give themselves a chance is to get top four seed protection through the first two rounds.

And now for some personal expectations:

• At least one player gets All-Big Ten honors. Likely candidates are Dylan Andrews or Tyler Bilodeau, but the main idea here is that someone emerges as the star on the team.

• Beat Gonzaga. North Carolina is the marquee game that I think the Bruins have the best chance of winning, but I think perceptions will only change for this program if they can get the Gonzaga monkey off their back. With a “neutral” site game at the new Intuit Dome, this is as good a time as any to finally get that win.

• Defend home court. The Big Ten schedule makers did UCLA no favors with this initial schedule, with the Bruins facing every other preseason ranked Big Ten team on the road, but that also means the home schedule is very manageable, with the hardest matchups being either Oregon or Michigan State. To that end, UCLA needs to win their home games to increase the margin of error.

At the end of the day, I think most UCLA fans want a winning program. Mick Cronin has provided that since he arrived in Westwood, and now the question is whether last year’s team was a blip or a harbinger of things to come. Only time will tell.

Go Bruins!

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