Postgame Talk: Coaching and Free Throws Doom UCLA Against Minnesota, 64-61

The Bruins picked the worst possible moment to collapse.

Aday Mara playing defense, a thing he is good at but we don’t get to see for some reason. (Photo credit: @UCLAMBB)

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It should have been a celebration. Mick Cronin should have been smiling after winning his 500th game while the Bruins got to 20 wins on the season to send the UCLA faithful home happy.

Instead, the Bruins and their coach found all sorts of ways to throw away what should have been an easy win, blowing an 11-point halftime lead for a bad loss to the Minnesota Golden Gophers, 64-61.

There are a few things to point to in the aftermath of what feels like the most frustrating loss of the season for the Bruins, but I want to start with a bit of a contrarian opinion: UCLA’s offense was not the reason they lost this game. The Bruins shot 45.1% from the field in the game, and even in the second half when Minnesota staged its comeback UCLA still shot 45.5%. The team only had nine turnovers all game, and outside of one statistical outlier which I’ll talk about later, had a really efficient offensive night. Too often, I think fans will judge an offense based on how many points it scores, but if you’re scoring at an efficient but methodical pace, that’s still good offense, and UCLA’s offense was more than good enough to win this game.

The defense, though. Woof.

There’s been this really bad trend in games over the last few months where UCLA’s defense has been exposed in the second half of games, with the Bruins flirting with disaster as a result. It happened against Southern Cal, Michigan State, and Indiana, and cost them games at Nebraska, Maryland, and Rutgers. Against Minnesota, this felt like the clearest example yet of this worrying trend, as Minnesota figured some things out and took advantage of UCLA’s poor defense. The biggest thing I can point to on this front is UCLA’s rotations, as Mick Cronin tends to shorten his bench in the second half, to his detriment. Just for this game, let’s look at the minutes breakdown for a few players:

Tyler Bilodeau: 31 minutes, 18 in the second half

Kobe Johnson: 32 minutes, 18 in the second half

Sebastian Mack: 25 minutes, 16 in the second half

Aday Mara: 14 minutes, 4 in the second half

Lazar Stefanovic: 10 minutes, 4 in the second half

Trent Perry: 3 minutes, 0 in the second half

I could go on, and there are some good explainers for a couple of these (Trent Perry looked abysmal in his three minutes at the tail end of the first half that let Minnesota back into the game, for example) but UCLA cut down the minutes being split up in the second half, in particular taking Aday Mara off the court and allowing Minnesota to have unimpeded access to the rim throughout. The Gophers had only six points in the paint in the first half to 14 in the second half; coincidentally, Mara played 10 minutes in the first half and only saw three minutes in the second before coming on as a late defensive sub. I cannot say definitively that UCLA would win this game if Mara plays more in the second half, partly because I’m still not sure if his stamina is fully back yet after his illness, but it does seem to track.

UCLA had no answer for Dawson Garcia in the second half, especially once Eric Dailey picked up his third foul quickly and had to sit for an extended period. To be fair, Garcia is probably the best overall player in the conference (yes, I’m aware that Rutgers has two top-five NBA picks on their roster currently) and it is hard to find a legitimate defensive answer for a 6’11” wing that can score at all three levels, but Dailey was at least providing some resistance to Garcia alongside some smart double-teams. In the second half, and especially once Dailey picked up his third foul, Minnesota changed tactics and gave Garcia the ball earlier and allowed him to create off the dribble, and between Tyler Bilodeau (too slow), Kobe Johnson (too small) and Sebastian Mack (lol) there was just no answer. Maybe having Mara in the game to dissuade Garcia from driving in would have helped - he did have a block on Garcia after all - but Garcia still looked methodical in scoring 27 of his season-high 32 points on the Bruins in that second half.

(Real quick on Mara: this was not a good night from him. I thought his defense was just ok, and he was only bailed out by his height and length on that end as he was constantly slow in rotations and had some terrible defensive chemistry with Bilodeau that led to a lot of open looks. Offensively, he was way too timid with the ball, looking to pass out of the past way too often instead of taking advantage of his size and going inside. Mara hit his two shots but he had the opportunity to take a lot more, and Cronin took him out in the second half not because of his defense but because he was being too selfless and leading to turnovers instead of imposing his will. But again, this is why Cronin should have played him more in the non-conference so he could get used to imposing his will and the others could get used to playing with him.)

UCLA seemingly believed it could live with Garcia getting his if everyone else was kept in check, but I’m not sure the game backed that up. Non-Garcia Gophers shot 39.3% (13-33) for the game but were worse in the second half (6-17) when Minnesota came back than they were in the first half (7-16) when Garcia was kept in check. Minnesota’s supporting cast is not very good, and I wonder if UCLA’s coaching staff got spooked by Minnesota’s last game against Southern Cal when the Gophers came back from a nine-point halftime deficit despite Garcia only scoring seven points in total and felt that this was the better option.

And yet all of that would have been just a worrying trend if UCLA could make a single free throw.

UCLA has not shot particularly well from the free throw line this year, sitting at around 70.4% on the season entering this one, but boy howdy did they pick the worst time to fall off a cliff. The Bruins went to the line 19 times in this game and came away with only nine points. That’s an abysmal 47.4%, and it gets worse if you take out the first half where the Bruins made all four of their attempts. On two different occasions, the Bruins missed the front end of a one-and-one, so these free-throw numbers could have been worse! UCLA missed their final six free throw attempts, which is not ideal when trying to ice a game away. Just make half of those misses, and UCLA wins this game, and likely comfortably considering those misses continued to give Minnesota hope for a comeback.

The end play is what it is. UCLA has gone to Dylan Andrews and Eric Dailey in these end-of-game situations, but with Dailey in one hell of a funk right now and Andrews reverting over the past few games, Cronin turned to Sebastian Mack to try and make something happen, and once the ball was inbounded, everyone in the building knew what was about to happen. Mack would drive, throw a shoulder to create contact, and hope for some help from the referees. Except in this case, Minnesota was ready for it too, as the Gopher defender got to the right spot and drew an offensive foul that ended the game.

I was thinking about something Mick Cronin said in the postgame on the drive home, about how he did not do a good enough job preparing the team to have the right attitude for this game, and it made me think about this season in general. I think it is fair to consider this a learning year for the program for a variety of reasons. UCLA as an institution is learning how to handle the travel demands of the Big Ten, and given their road woes this year, I would expect changes next year to get the team more prepared for that kind of travel. Similarly, UCLA gave an effort tonight that would have gotten them a comfortable win against a bottom-tier team in the Pac-12, but the bottom-tier in the Big Ten is a huge step up, and the program is still learning that it cannot have off nights from an energy and effort standpoint. A multitude of minor things build into this as well, such as teaching a bunch of players from losing programs to develop winning habits like fighting for a loose ball, boxing out on rebounds, and making free throws, and those things don’t just happen overnight.

But it also needs to be a learning year for Mick Cronin as well. He has to stop being so rigid in his rotations and who he trusts. Cronin built a deep bench, perhaps the deepest bench UCLA has seen in a long time, but he negates that strength with the limited rotations and poor development plan for players like Mara and Trent Perry, who have some of the highest upsides on the team. Cronin raised the floor this season, but he’s also lowering the ceiling with some of his decisions, and while it is good that Cronin has reset things from last year’s disaster, he has to evolve and change things in future seasons to grow the program best.

Cronin has proven he is a good coach. You don’t get to 499 wins by being bad at your job. But the story going forward is whether he can prove he is a great coach.

Go Bruins.

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