Postgame Talk: Shorthanded UCLA Fades Against UConn, Eliminated in 73-57 Defeat
The lack of Tyler Bilodeau was too much to overcome for the Bruins.
The writing was seemingly on the wall before this game even tipped off.
Less than an hour before the start, reports came out that senior forward Tyler Bilodeau would miss his third-consecutive game with a knee injury. Without their leading scorer, the UCLA Bruins were looking at a very steep mountain to try and overcome as they tried to advance in the NCAA Tournament.
And, to their credit, the Bruins did battle, consistently staring a healthier UConn Huskies team in the face and repeatedly making tough shots to get back in the game, but in the end, it was too much to overcome. The shorthanded Bruins eventually faced one too many UConn runs that they could not overcome, falling 73-57 and ending their season.
The Bruins needed a lot of things to go right to get a victory, and some of them did happen. In particular, Xavier Booker played one of his best games of the season again, finishing with a team-high 13 points on 4-7 shooting while tying for the team lead with five rebounds. On the flip side, he helped keep UConn big Tarris Reed Jr in check; the big man came back to earth with only 10 points on 3-8 shooting (though he did have 13 rebounds on his own). UCLA did not need Booker to explode offensively but they did need him to do his best to even out Reed’s output, and he came close enough that it’s hard to feel bad about it. Shout out to Eric Dailey as well, who tried to fill the hole left by Bilodeau with 12 points and five rebounds if his own, though he started pressing down the stretch.
Unfortunately, that’s about where the good feelings end. The Bruins needed their three-headed hydra of guards to be exceptional, and they were merely fine. Skyy Clark was probably the best, scoring 11 points on 5-8 shooting, but he also had three turnovers. Donovan Dent was similar, also scoring 11 points on an inefficient shooting night (2-9, though he was 6-6 from the free throw line), and while he had nine assists, his two turnovers are his highest total in a month. And none of this gets into the disaster that was Trent Perry, who finished with only five points on 2-8 shooting, routinely looking harried and making mistakes that he had largely looked free of in recent weeks.
It is hard for me to say UCLA struggled with UConn defensively, as they routinely took away the things the Huskies wanted to do offensively. UConn simply hit their shots, including more than a few contested ones, and they bullied the Bruins on the interior, scoring 30 points to only 20 for the Bruins. Rebounding was as much of a problem as you would have expected - the Huskies had 36 rebounds compared to only 24 for the Bruins - but surprisingly the Bruins weren’t killed by second-chance points as you might expect. What helped UCLA was the high amount of turnovers they forced, which limited UConn possessions.
I don’t have much to say about this game, other than it felt like a microcosm of the season. This team had plenty of promise, as we got to glimpse multiple times, but things kept happening that prevented them from putting it all together. And now they enter an uncertain offseason that could make or break the Mick Cronin tenure.
We’ll have a postmortem…probably next week when I go on break. Until then, focus will (rightfully) turn to the women’s team.
Go Bruins.
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Obviously not something I was gonna talk about in the immediate aftermath of this loss, and maybe not something I’ll talk about in the postmortems (with those things, I usually let them take me where they go) but one thing I’ll note is that Mick Cronin is not alone in failing to evaluate both players and the NIL market - the defending champions just got bounced because they completely misevaluated their backcourt, for example - and a lot of blue blood programs are finding themselves falling behind due to some level of arrogance. UCLA, Kentucky, Kansas, and UNC are all out of the tourney already with varying levels of dysfunction, but one thing I would note is that many of these fanbases assume winning is their birthright and have been slow to adapt to the changing college landscape. The teams that have done best are either new money teams (Michigan, Arizona, Houston) or Duke, who was already running the best paid-players operation pre-NIL and just got to bring it into the open.
This is not a defense of Cronin but rather a statement that UCLA fans in general cannot sit by and be bystanders regarding NIL. If Cronin is replaced, then UCLA fans need to come out with the NIL guns before the first game even tips off instead of doing the “if they win then rewards will come” bullshit they always do, and if Cronin stays, they still need to invest in NIL regardless of their opinion of Cronin, because any potential future coach will look at UCLA fans being fickle and decide that the program is not serious.
I know I'll probably get flamed for this because it doesn't fit into what many consider to be his personality, but Cronin should be praised for putting Bilodeau's health and future above the immediate need of this team, frustrating as not having him last night in a winnable game was for all of us. Some others stepped up in his absence over these past 4 games though that wasn't as consistent as we'd want - let's face it, this team was ultimately always going to go as far as the guard play would take them, which was just laid more bare after Bilo was hurt - but putting the player's future above (potentially) his own is the kind of act that not many would ascribe to a coach with Cronin's rep - this doesn't mean I'm a "Croninista" but fair is fair: he did a solid for a player who gave 3 years to the program and that should be recognized along with all his flaws.