UCLA Athletics Whip-Around 5/30: Women's College World Series and More
Taking a quick look around the UCLA Athletics sphere.
Hey guys, it’s been a month since the last of these Whip-Arounds, and a lot has happened in that time. UCLA has added two more national championships to their total, with men’s volleyball capturing #122 in early May and women’s water polo following that up with #123 a week later. Most of the spring sports have wrapped up their seasons at this point, though one team is still going strong, so they will kick off our coverage today.
Although before that, we would be remiss if we did not start by offering our condolences to the Walton family for the passing of Bill Walton. Joe wrote an excellent article on his passing that you should probably go read right now, and the most I can add is that he was an evangelist for a conference that did not deserve him. The world is a sadder place without him in it.
Softball
It’s Women’s College World Series time, and UCLA has made its rightful trip back to Oklahoma City.
There was a point this year when I was starting to wonder if UCLA would make it. Last year, the Bruins put up a dominant season only to immediately falter in the NCAA regionals, losing two straight games to get bounced from the tournament immediately. That scuffle translated into this year, with the Bruins trying to figure things out after the departure of so many veterans and younger players forced to step up. UCLA’s pitching staff went from one dominated by Megan Faraimo to a young one led by sophomore Taylor Tinsley, who got some experience last year but was being thrust into a large role alongside freshman Kaitlyn Terry. The Bruins entered Pac-12 play at 11-6, which is fine but well below the standard they’d set over the past decade.
But then the Bruins got hot, and started to chain wins together. Sure, it helps to still have stalwart center fielder Maya Brady in the fold, and catcher Sharlize Palacios has emerged as a major offensive force, but it is the pitching in particular that has come alive late in the season. The Bruins went into Palo Alto and held Stanford to three runs across three games en route to a series sweep, and while there have been some hiccups here and there, the UCLA pitching staff has generally emerged as a strength, and that has allowed the offense to become more settled and not feel they have to press to win all the time. Take the regionals, where the pitching staff allowed seven runs in total while the offense put up 25 runs, leading to two run-rule games. The team followed that up with a dominant showing in the Super Regional against a Georgia team that had beaten the Bruins 7-2 earlier in the season. Across two games, the Bulldogs were only able to scrounge together one run while the Bruins put up 14, getting another run-rule victory en route to a 2-0 sweep and a spot in Oklahoma City.
There is a lot to be said about peaking at the right time, and it is hard to argue this UCLA team is not doing that. They have already shown this postseason that they can fight back when things get tough, with a come-from-behind victory over Virginia Tech in the regionals along with one over Arizona in the Pac-12 Tournament. They’ve shown an ability to grind out wins with their Pac-12 Tournament win over Utah, and shown the ability to drive in runs in bunches. They have players who are looking confident, especially Palacios, who has hit seven home runs in the postseason so far, including two in the series-clinching win over Georgia. If there is a flaw on this team, it is that the lineup has been a bit stagnant near the bottom of the order, but if the top continues to produce the way it has in the postseason, that shouldn’t be much of an issue.
I don’t know if I can predict a happy outcome for this UCLA team in Oklahoma City - Texas and Oklahoma have looked extremely good all season while Florida is not far behind them - but sometimes its important to have the hottest hand, and UCLA’s is pretty hot at the moment.
Football
Coach Deshaun Foster continues to do all the right things in his brief time as the head coach at UCLA, especially on the recruiting front. This past weekend, UCLA secured the commitment of four-star quarterback Madden Iamaleava from Warren High School in Downey (and if that name sounds familiar, it is because his brother Nico was the one that reportedly signed an $8 million dollar NIL deal to play at Tennessee, and will be starting there this year). Iamaleava is a big get for Foster and his new UCLA staff, as he rates at the #11 quarterback prospect in his class and the 14th best player in the state of California according to 247Sports.
But it is the fact that Foster is even getting commitments at all that has to feel a bit strange to Bruin fans. After all, they’ve just experienced six years of de-emphasized recruiting under Chip Kelly, so the fact that UCLA now has seven commitments at the end of May (with more potentially on the way) has to be a disorienting sight for many. Foster is also doing a great job of focusing on California recruiting, with five of his seven commits being from the state. With Southern Cal in particular operating on a more national recruiting strategy, this creates an opening for UCLA to reestablish itself in a recruiting hotbed that it has avoided for years.
I asked a question of Steven Godfrey of Split Zone Duo earlier this month about what the early returns of the Foster hire are on the national level, and he gave a pretty solid answer that will probably cause some level of angst among a certain subset of readers. Given all the unknowns about Foster, especially as he has never been a head coach or called plays before, and given how he had to try and assemble a staff at a poor time in the schedule, UCLA likely does not have the highest outlook on this coming season. If anything, making a bowl game would be considered a huge success for Foster’s first year. But losses are going to be expected this year, and a shuffling of the coaching staff next offseason would not surprise anyone as Foster would be able to have a better pool to pick from in assembling a staff. This is as close to a Year Zero situation as we get in the modern college football game.
Godfrey ran through all of that, and then said that if you were being pragmatic about Foster, his floor as a coach is that of a transition coach that can hopefully leave UCLA in a better spot than when he found it. That’s not a bad thing by any stretch; one could argue Rick Neuheisel ultimately fits in this spot as he restocked the roster with talent that would be better utilized by his successor Jim Mora. If Foster can simply improve the roster’s talent level and help the school improve on its NIL operation, that would be a win, and would set UCLA up to hire a better coach for the next hiring cycle. The optimistic view is not even that Foster can have a Pete Carroll-esque run of dominance in Los Angeles, but rather that he can push UCLA into being a team that can qualify for the College Football Playoffs every so often. If Foster can get UCLA to have an eight-win floor in their new conference, that would be a tremendous win.
Men’s Basketball
This is a quick one, but in the last Whip-Around I mentioned that the only remaining piece of the roster puzzle was whether UCLA would move forward with recruiting Harvard-Westlake guard Trent Perry or not, and who from the current roster would move on to create space for him. Mick Cronin and his staff ultimately decided that Perry was worth it, and got Perry to commit and sign with the team on May 8. What I did not expect was the next part: no one entered the transfer portal. Instead, it was reported that one of the other players on the roster would be signing an NIL deal that would provide the money for a scholarship on top of their NIL money, essentially giving UCLA 14 scholarship players while only having to hand out 13 scholarships. It’s a creative flex on the part of Cronin and the Bruins, showing that their NIL is strong enough to roster extra high-level players, and gives UCLA an enviable amount of depth going into next year, where every position could be considered three-deep.
As for what this means in the future (besides the fact that it made renewing my season tickets an easier decision), UCLA’s recruiting for the next cycle is going to be incredibly small. UCLA will only be considering a handful of high school recruits for maybe 1-2 spots (top among those names are local products Nikolas Khamenia of Harvard-Westlake and Brayden Burries from Eleanor Roosevelt in San Bernardino). They will also want a scholarship or two available for the transfer portal, but as of now I would not expect the same level of roster shakeup that we are seeing this offseason.
Quickies
Women’s basketball picked up another commitment this week, taking in Texas A&M forward Janiah Barker to help replenish the front court depth. I felt the forward spot was a huge sore point for last year’s team, and Coach Close has seemingly addressed that this offseason by bringing in Barker and Oregon State forward Timea Gardiner to infuse much-needed talent at that spot. Hilariously, the addition of Barker also means UCLA now has the top three recruits from the 2022 recruiting cycle (Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice were 1 and 2 that cycle) and four of the top six if you include Gardiner.
Joe wrote about attending the final Pac-12 regular season game for UCLA athletics, a home game for UCLA baseball that they won over Stanford. But that win was one of too few for the Bruins this season, and while I don’t think Coach John Savage is on his way out at the moment, it should cause a major shift in thinking for how he approaches the program. The simple fact is that there is no excuse for UCLA to put out a product this poor given how talent-rich Southern California is, and even considering the injuries to the pitching staff UCLA had more than enough talent to be better than they were. A shake-up of the coaching staff at the very least seems to be in order.
As we approach the summer, I wanted to let you guys know the content is not going anywhere. I got plans to get you acquainted with our new conference mates in the Big Ten and to start something of a book club since I’ll finally have some free time to just read. Hope you’re looking forward to it all!
Go Bruins!
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I also think the former P12 teams will excel in the B10 as Oregon is ranked #4 behind #2 Ohio State in the current ESPN CFB rankings.
I am more surprised that no one entered the transfer portal to get more playing time. That says a lot about Cronin being able to keep players on the team.