Postgame Talk: UCLA Steals the Big Ten Home Opener Over Washington, 82-80

The Bruins collapsed down the stretch but did enough good things earlier to secure the win.

Skyy Clark (Photo credit: @UCLAMBB)

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The result of this game was a math problem. UCLA was a worse team than Washington for the first seven minutes of this game. They were the better team for the middle 27 minutes, and then they were the worst team in the known universe for the final six minutes.

It’s not a great way to live, but the result was an 82-80 victory on the road over Washington to open Big Ten play.

UCLA was without the services of Trent Perry for this game, depriving the team of one of their more consistent players over the past few weeks and decimating the backcourt depth in the process. Mick Cronin was stuck in the unenviable position of trusting Skyy Clark and a recently injured Donovan Dent to play the vast majority of the minutes and raise their games. Fortunately for him, that’s exactly what happened. Clark had his best game of the year, putting up 25 points on 7-9 shooting, including six of his seven three-point attempts, while playing clean basketball on the defensive end and not getting into silly foul trouble as has happened too often this year. Dent, meanwhile, looked the healthiest he has in weeks, showing off an increased burst of speed en route to a 17-point performance on 6-13 shooting, adding eight assists to only four turnovers. Cronin mentioned in the postgame that Dent had been dealing with a foot and oblique injury earlier this year, so maybe that’s an indication that things have gotten better for him. This was by far the most encouraging performance the duo has had this year, and perhaps it can serve as a catalyst for better things to come.

The Bruins also got a great offensive performance from Tyler Bilodeau, himself just returning from a leg injury that kept him out of the previous two games. Bilodeau was quiet in the first half and was clearly not back to 100%, missing stretches of the second half with cramps, but he was a force in the second, scoring 20 of his 21 points in the second half and helping the Bruins stretch things out to a 16-point lead late in the second half.

What also helped the Bruins was a change in defensive strategy. Washington dominated things in the early going, shredding the Bruin interior and racing out to an 11-point lead. Cronin made a defensive adjustment, going to an extended zone that allowed the team to stabilise the interior defence and forced Washington into more outside shooting, which seemed to be a recipe for success. Washington ultimately shot 37.5% from distance, but a team with Hannes Steinbach and Franck Kepnang would ideally want to shoot as much from the interior as possible, and for UCLA, that created more defensive wins. Things really shone with Steven Jamerson on the floor, and he created some problems for the Huskies in his 21 minutes, providing a solid anchor for that zone. The downside to the zone was that it caused even more rebounding issues, but the Bruins aren’t a great rebounding team to begin with, so this seemed like a calculated risk on the part of Cronin.

For the Bruins, there were two problems. The first problem was Eric Dailey, who was nonexistent in his 16 minutes. Dailey finished with no points, missing all three of his shots from the field and both of his free throws, but more problematic was that he did not register a single rebound or assist either. He had four fouls, which limited his floor time, and the best thing I can say about his performance today is that he did not turn the ball over.

The other problem was UCLA’s play down the stretch. With 4:45 remaining in the game, Xavier Booker hit a three to push the UCLA lead back out to 16 points. A win should have been simple at that point, especially since Washington’s best player in Steinbach had picked up a 4th foul with 6:44 remaining. Up to that point, Cronin’s offence had been at its most ruthless, relentlessly targeting Steinbach and putting him in bad defensive positions, and it looked like the Bruins would continue that all the way to the finish.

And then…they stopped doing that. UCLA went into a shell on offense, taking the air out of the ball and running bad sets over and over. Bilodeau took three of the final six shots, though many of them were deep in the shot clock and forced. Jamar Brown and Brandon Williams each took a shot in the final two minutes, while Dent and Clark did not take a shot (to be fair, Clark was fouled on a three-point attempt). UCLA stopped running the offense that had gotten them the big lead, and in the process let Washington back into the game thanks to some hot shooting and mind-numbing defense (my “favorite” being the foul by Clark on a driving Zoom Diallo when the Huskies were trying to score as quickly as possible in the last 20 seconds, giving Washington a cheap three-point play for no reason). On some level, it wasn’t surprising - after the bad loss to UC Berkeley last week and the way they faded against Arizona, you could feel the tension from the players trying to get the win. If you want to be an optimist, you’re hopeful that this win will get the team to play more loosely in these situations. If you’re a pessimist, this was another example of a Cronin team choking an easy win down the stretch.

In any case, the Bruins won a road conference game. It wasn’t pretty, and I’m not sure I’m going to go to bed happy with how things went, but it was a win.

At least I have Bob Chesney to write about for the next few days.

Go Bruins!

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