Postgame Talk: Season Over, UCLA Falls to Oregon 68-66

Time to finally turn our attention to the future.

Dylan Andrews (Photo credit: Jan Kim Lim/uclabruins.com)

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And so ends one of the more turbulent seasons I’ve ever covered.

I honestly did not know what to expect late in this game, as Oregon pushed their lead out to 10 points and looked like they were on the verge of putting the UCLA Bruins away for good. We’ve seen this team collapse and quit in these situations, and we’ve seen this team claw its way back and make a run at winning, so it was a question of which UCLA team was going to show up in this final stretch.

The answer, surprisingly enough, was fight back.

The Bruins staged a furious late rally to make things interesting in the final minutes, with Lazar Stefanovic and Dylan Andrews keying things in the final minutes. Unfortunately for the Bruins, the deficit was just too great and Oregon hit just enough free throws down the stretch, which led to Andrews last-second shot to tie rattling off the iron as the Bruins fell to Oregon 68-66.

UCLA did keep things competitive for most of the game despite only getting 17 minutes from Adem Bona, who got legislated out of this game in a major way. Mick Cronin mentioned at the half that the way Bona gets officiated compared to every other big in this league is insane, and after watching this game and the previous one, where Oumar Ballo was able to mug any Southern Cal player that got in the paint, I agree. When the recently-named Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year was allowed to actually play defense, he was great, but again, this conference is dying for a reason, and absolute trash officiating leading to an unwatchable product has had some effect here.

Andrews again did most of the heavy lifting, though he was clearly not as efficient as he was on Wednesday. Still, his 24 points led all scorers, and he would have ended up with more than two assists had the team around him rose to the challenge. Sebastian Mack decided to play the role of Robin today, scoring 16 points and finding his way to the line 11 times with nine makes, but his defense was horrendous and made him a net neutral. Seriously - in the first half Mack played 19 minutes and was a +9 in +/-, with 14 points on eight shots. In the second half, Mack only took one shot which he missed, only hit two of his four free throw attempts, and let that take over his game as he played terrible defense; unsurprisingly, he only played nine minutes in the second half and ended that half at -16.

Jan Vide played his most minutes by far this year and actually looked like he belonged, which was surprising to say the least. We’ll see if he comes back and maybe develops an outside shot, because eventually Oregon figured out they could play off him. That was the story for most of the team, as Andrews was seemingly the only player willing to take a shot while others kept passing up open looks. Andrews had almost half of the teams shots, which doesn’t seem like a recipe for success against a more-complete Oregon squad that will get scoring from multiple players.

The loss will almost assuredly end this season of UCLA men’s basketball. There is no realm where the Bruins make the NCAA Tournament given they finished the season with a sub-.500 record, and you have to assume UCLA will continue their tradition of rejecting a bid to the NIT if they are somehow chosen. I don’t think that is a bad thing either; besides freeing me from having to watch and write about this team any more times this season, it means UCLA and Mick Cronin can officially start making decisions about who will be playing for this team next season (and potentially if Mick Cronin will be here next year - not saying he will be fired but there continues to be faint smoke coming from Louisville).

As you’ll see next week when the post-mortem drops, I think there are only two players that have a returning spot next year locked down in Andrews and Bona (who has a decision to make regarding the NBA, though this game feels like one that made his decision for him). Past that, there are questions. For example:

• Lazar Stefanovic will likely be back, but he had a horrific Pac-12 Tournament, completely disappearing in both games right when the Bruins needed a third scoring option, and his defense slipped throughout the season.

• Sebastian Mack had a much better game compared to Wednesday, but his defense was so awful that it negated all of the positives he exhibited on the offensive end. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the final UCLA run took place once Mack was pulled for getting backdoored for the second time in a minute. He’s been the biggest frontrunner on the team and I think Cronin has a tougher decision here than people think.

• Jan Vide actually got a fair amount of run in this one, which was surprising, but he also rose to the moment in an unexpected way. I still don’t know if his game is going to translate over a longer stretch of season, but there’s intrigue here.

• Kenny Nwuba is done with eligibility, and Aday Mara looked fine, but if he stays UCLA is going to have to completely rethink their defensive system with him in the game, because asking him to hedge and do all the things Bona does defensively is a recipe for disaster (this is why Nwuba kept getting more minutes than Mara, because Nwuba at least can pretend to be Bona on the court even if it is a huge step down on both ends).

• Will McClendon spent the whole year bringing nothing to the table, and I have to think this is the end of the road for him.

• UCLA basically ran with four guards, with Brandon Williams in the game for bits and pieces and Berke Buyuktuncel only seeing the court for a minute. Williams is intriguing but may want to go back closer to home, but this spot in general was a huge black hole that needs to be addressed in the offseason.

We’ll have the post-mortem up starting on Monday (because I’m still writing it and I think it will end up needing multiple articles) and then we’ll get to turn our attention fully to the women’s team before settling in to the “offseason”, though with spring football practices actually being open to the public you may actually get consequential practice reports for the first time since the Mora years. And we’ll drop into other sports here and there (because boy do I have some opinions on what John Savage is doing to UCLA baseball at the moment).

Buckle up for what be one of more consequential offseasons in UCLA men’s basketball history.

Go Bruins.

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