Postgame Talk: UCLA Goes Out with a Whimper In Big Ten Tournament, Lose to Wisconsin 86-70

The Bruins were buried by an onslaught of threes by the Badgers.

Kobe Johnson (Photo credit: @UCLAMBB)

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I’m at work still so you’ll forgive me for writing most of this column while the game is still being played. I promise that the final six minutes or so won’t change the outcome much beyond the final score.

The UCLA Bruins walked into Gainbridge Fieldhouse as the #4 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, but you wouldn’t know that based on what happened on the court. The Wisconsin Badgers started the game hot and never took their foot off the gas pedal, raining in three-pointer after three-pointer against a hapless and apathetic Bruin defense, racing out to a 19-point halftime lead that they would never relinquish, ultimately winning by the final score of 86-70.

Credit should go to Wisconsin for coming into this game with the proper amount of focus for the matchup. I did not feel that Wisconsin was playing anywhere close to their best basketball coming into this game, having lost a miserable game at home to Penn State to end the regular season and scuffling against Northwestern in their first Big Ten Tournament game. Still, all of that went out the window quickly. It wasn’t as if UCLA’s defense was bad to start this game, as the Bruins were forcing Wisconsin into holding the ball deep into the shot clock. The Badgers simply made some tough shots, and that seemed to demoralize the UCLA defense, as the rotations got slower and slower as the game progressed. It did not help that Wisconsin was able to dictate the pace of play throughout the game, as this game was more up-and-down than I’m sure Mick Cronin and his staff would like. John Tonje was unreal, going 9-10 from the field, including 6-6 from three, and got nine rebounds to go with it. Tonje mentioned in the postgame that the Badgers have been focused on this matchup for a week, which could explain their focus compared to UCLA, who likely saw this as just another game before the important tournament starts next week.

But this was also an exceptionally bad game from the Bruins, both tactically and effort-wise. On a tactics level, I get Mick Cronin’s commitment to shutting things down on the interior. He’s playing the percentages defensively and it isn’t a bad idea. The problem comes when the Bruins face a team that is more than comfortable with shooting from distance, as Wisconsin clearly is, because UCLA’s rotations are nowhere near clean enough to defend the outside. The Badgers were able to take advantage of those rotations and get off a bevy of clean looks, and most of their shooters are good enough to knock those down at a reasonable clip. If your opponent ties the record for most three-pointers made in a Big Ten Tournament game, then you are part of the problem for not changing the coverages to account for that.

It also doesn’t help that, in games like this, Cronin continues to play Tyler Bilodeau at the five instead of either of his two actual bigs on the roster. Bilodeau held up ok defensively, but because he is not good against bigger post players, the coaching staff felt they had to consistently send double-teams into the post, and Wisconsin was more than willing to kick out immediately and find the open man for another three-point attempt. Again, the rotations were slow after a certain point so that certainly did not help, but if you can’t rely on your interior player to hold up at all defensively, then why is there a continued insistence in putting him in a position to fail?

Aday Mara’s minutes were limited by an ankle twist he suffered in the second half, as he looked poised to soak up plenty of minutes in garbage time, but his deployment continues to baffle the Bruin faithful. Mara was fairly effective on the offensive end (though I will note that his rebounding numbers were a bit inflated due to Angel Reese-ing it a few times on put-back attempts) but Wisconsin figured out the key to neutralizing him on the defensive end: simply never go inside and play a big that forces him to the outside. Steven Crowl hit all three of his three-point attempts as Mara was caught in no-man’s land trying to protect the paint and guard a three-point shooter, and that’s a problem UCLA will need to figure out for the future. I felt William Kyle had a good game in mop-up duty, and while he still can’t hit free throws he was playing with a level of aggression that was nonexistent from so many Bruins.

UCLA’s offense was brutal in this game, mostly from the starting unit. Kobe Johnson is the only starter that you could consider as having had a good day, going 5-9 from the field (4-7 from three) with five rebounds; the rest of the starting unit only outscored him by two points. Eric Dailey, fresh off a career-high 25 points last Saturday, had zero points, going 0-6 from the field and looking completely lost on both ends of the court. Tyler Bilodeau was not much better, only hitting one of his seven shots for two total points, though at least he was active on the boards. Skyy Clark and Dylan Andrews both had seven points apiece, but those came shooting performances of 3-10 and 2-8 respectively. Sebastian Mack ended up leading the team with 18 points but it was on a wildly-inefficient 5-14 shooting night, and he ultimately fouled out of the game.

The Bruins were brutal from the field in general, shooting 32.4% from the field, though with a respectable 30% from three. It is the first time they have shot under 40% from the field in a game since February 4, ironically in a victory over Michigan State. This does feel like an offensive outlier when you look at the entirety of the season, given that it was the worst shooting performance by the Bruins by a considerable margin and given that this team hit over 50% of their shots against Wisconsin in the previous meeting. Credit to Wisconsin for upping the intensity and making the Bruins uncomfortable, but this is an instance of the players not performing when the lights got bright, something that had not truly been a problem for them this season; the Michigan game was the only other game where the Bruins were truly blown out, and even that game could be laid at the feet of a miserable defensive gameplan more than the offense.

I’ll have an article coming out this coming week talking about the team, so I don’t want to dwell too much on the future, but in the present there is going to be a question of whether this team can pick itself up off the mat and regroup in time for the NCAA Tournament. The Bruins are not at risk of missing the tournament, and still seem destined for a six or seven seed in the tournament based on their resume, but the performance does not inspire a lot of confidence in a deep tournament run. The team has been wildly inconsistent from game to game and even half to half this season, and it will remain an open question which UCLA team will show up in a given moment: will it be the team that took out Gonzaga, Michigan State, and ran Oregon off the court, or the team that got blown out by Michigan and Wisconsin?

Onwards to the Madness.

Go Bruins.

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