UCLA Men's Basketball Post-Mortem, Part 2: Improvements And Setbacks
Taking a closer look at the offense and defense this past season.
In part one of our series looking back at the 2021-2022 season, we took a long look over the season as a whole to gauge whether it was successful or not.
I know the plan for this second column is to go over the offense and defense before getting to areas of improvement, but if you’ll permit me I’m actually going to look at areas of improvement first.
See, we’re in the offseason for the basketball program I coach as well, and part of my plan for this team is to do “film study” where we essentially watch basketball games to help the players build up their basketball IQ. I wanted to focus on defense for the film study, and unfortunately, there are no full games up yet from this past tournament so I can’t show off Houston (we’re going to implement more man defense, and Houston was the best team I saw at utilizing those principles) so I’m having to look at games from the last tournament. I should also note that I try to stay away from UCLA games just to avoid bias, but I settled on showing the Michigan game from last year.
I point this out because, in watching the game, I was struck by one thing in particular: the play of Kenneth Nwuba. Nwuba was a defensive force for the game, but what stuck out to me, in particular, was the fact that Mick Cronin kept going back to Cody Riley rather than stick with Nwuba, who clearly outplayed Riley throughout the game. Riley only came out of the game due to foul trouble, and would eventually foul out, while Nwuba would be on the floor for the final pivotal defensive possessions to close the game out.
I bring this up as a point of hindsight because one of the biggest questions still lingering around the program, and the one that was the biggest factor in UCLA’s season ending in the Sweet Sixteen is Mick Cronin’s personnel usage and his reliance on the starters.
This is arguably the first year we were able to best judge Mick Cronin’s personnel usage over a long period of time just due to the sheer depth of the roster compared to recent years. The last few years have seen attrition and player loss to the point where Cronin’s rotations were designed around who was available. That Final Four run in particular was shocking in that two of the better players on the team, Chris Smith and Jalen Hill, had both been out for a significant amount of time. Guys were playing 30+ minute games mostly because they had to, with a very short bench available.
This year should have been different. UCLA again had post depth that was able to survive without Cody Riley for the first few months and had wing depth to spare. There was even a question going into the season of who would be sacrificing minutes to accommodate rising talent like Jaylen Clark and talented newcomers like Peyton Watson. The answer was…no one, really. Jaylen Clark saw his minutes per game double from last year, but a lot of that was due to a combination of missing time for injury and starting a few games in place of others. Watson’s minutes essentially came from what Jake Kyman was getting the previous year. Myles Johnson took all of the departed Jalen Hill’s minutes. Everything else was the same.
On the one hand, I get where Mick Cronin was coming from. The transformational recruiting classes had not come in yet (but are coming this year), but this group had proven it could play at the high level required to compete for a national championship. Consistency was the main issue, but Cronin wanted to make sure the floor was as high as possible. The problem here is that by raising the floor, he ended up lowering the ceiling at the same time. Those reserves (Clark, Watson, Johnson) brought a different look that UCLA’s previous Final Four team lacked, and better allowed the Bruins to match up with the big athletic teams that had been their Achilles heel the past few years.
The crazy thing is, I think on some level Cronin understood that. Look back at the three games against Southern Cal, a team that is not very good but possesses the size and length that usually gives this team problems. In the first game, Cronin set minutes as he usually does - starters play big minutes, small amounts for the reserves. It did not work, and the Trojans won their fifth straight meeting. In the second matchup, we saw a little shift (Johnson played more) but the win seemed to have more to do with the team playing in front of their home crowd. The third game, however, saw Cronin make the most adjustments; Johnson got the start and played the majority of minutes, Watson saw the more minutes than he had in the previous two meetings combined, and UCLA won by a comfortable margin.
The sad thing is this never translated to other opponents. Cronin rode the starters over the bench in every major game, and the strategy only truly paid off earlier in the season when the Bruins had fresh legs. In late matchups with Arizona and North Carolina, those teams were able to beat UCLA with their athleticism and size, and the Bruins consistently left their best counter on the bench. Cronin only ever went away from his starting group when forced to, either by foul trouble or injury rather than the rhythms of the game. It’s the kind of problem that feels very obvious in hindsight, especially looking over previous seasons.
The good news is, this is a problem that should resolve itself one way or another next year. UCLA will be losing a chunk of the starting lineup, which means Cronin will be playing mostly with guys he recruited to fit his vision for the program. Time to see if that changes his approach.
Ok, that was a lot on one subject, so let’s take a closer look at the offense and defense.
Starting with the offense, I will note that UCLA backslid this past season…from 11th to 12th in the nation in adjusted offensive efficiency per KenPom. That level of consistency is impressive, especially with a coaching staff known for its defensive acumen, but it is also impressive when you look at the number a bit deeper.
UCLA’s offensive system remained similar to the year prior, but with some changes. For one, the Bruins ran with a much higher pace this year than in the past, going up to 65.2 possessions per game from 63.8 the year prior. They did this despite averaging a similar possession length to years prior. More impressive? UCLA’s effective FG% was much worse than it had been the year prior, going from 52% in 2020-2021 to 50.5% this year. That might not seem like much, but it was good enough for a 70 spot drop in rankings. All of that tracks with the eye test, especially as guys struggled throughout the year to hit the shots that they were making more consistently the year prior. Yet despite all that, UCLA’s efficiency rankings only dropped one spot. How?
The biggest reason was, like the year prior, UCLA’s turnover rates. The Bruins got much better at protecting the ball between Mick Cronin’s first and second year, going from 19.5% (224th in the nation) to 15.7% (25th). The Bruins somehow managed another jump this past year, putting up a ridiculous 13.2% turnover rate on the year, good for 4th in the nation. It was just extremely difficult to get the Bruins to turn the ball over, and when you aren’t ending possessions in turnovers, that means you’re getting more shots up as a result and will end up scoring more. In fact, UCLA’s points per game went up by two points this year as a result of this trend. The Bruins also improved their offensive rebounding numbers compared to last year, and the same basic principle applies; if you can guarantee more shot attempts than your opponent, you’re going to have a good time.
Now, I think there are a lot of stylistic questions you could have with the current form of the offense, but I understand completely what Mick Cronin was going for here. UCLA found an inefficiency in the midrange jumper and had a bunch of shooters who excelled in that space. The combination of Tyger Campbell, Jaime Jaquez, Johnny Juzang, and Jules Bernard was so difficult to guard because all of them were excellent at getting to their spot and creating open looks, which meant teams had to have a group of solid individual defenders, and if you were caught with a bad one on the floor, the Bruins were going to hunt that guy relentlessly. It is not the most aesthetically-pleasing basketball, but it is brutally effective.
There were some improvements from players here. Tyger Campbell became UCLA’s best outside shooter after one offseason of focus, which was huge for his game and opened up all kinds of options for next year. Jaylen Clark showed much more aggression on offense and looks to have a playable outside shot to complement his ability to muck things up in the paint. Jaime Jaquez struggled from distance (which was the thing he needed to work on to get to the next level) but somehow developed a bevy of tricks and moves in the short to mid-range that would make the guys running sets at the YMCA blush with envy.
The question going forward is what changes. Bernard is likely gone from the program, and the assumption all year is that this was Juzang’s last year as well. Jaquez’s status is up in the air as well. The Bruins will need to incorporate a wealth of players who do not possess the same skillset as their predecessors. Do we see more set plays as a result, or more motion offense considering many of the players work well as slashers and cutters? I expect things to take a step back, but the question will be how much - if UCLA can minimize the drop-off, it will be a good sign for the future.
One thing I would like to see next year, and I know I’m going to be killed for this one, is more three-point shots. One of the constant criticisms of the team this year was their three-point shooting, but the stats paint a different picture. UCLA was one of the worst teams in the country when it came to three-point attempts per game, but was one of the better teams in the country when it came to shooting percentage on those attempts. Looking at the teams ahead of UCLA in offensive efficiency, only Kentucky shot a lower percentage of their shots from distance than the Bruins and considering their interior it makes sense. Everyone else shot them at a much higher clip, and honestly, if UCLA had just taken 2-3 more attempts per game, it probably ends up higher in the rankings.
One other change I would like to see is more ball movement in general. We often lament how the offense could get bogged down when Tyger Campbell was off the floor, but the Bruins really did not put up great assist numbers in general, with Campbell accounting for the majority of them. A lot of this, again, has to do with the design of the offense in general, with its focus on isolation and hunting for mismatches, but it would still be nice to see a more team-oriented attack in the future.
Moving over to the defense, this was by far UCLA’s best defensive year under Mick Cronin, with the Bruins finishing the year ranked 16th in adjusted defensive efficiency per Kenpom.
Diving into the numbers, there’s a lot to like here. For one, UCLA got much better at contesting shots, holding opponents to a 47.6% effective FG% on the season, which is almost 3% better than the Bruins did last year. The three-point defense, which was a major problem in year one (opponents shot 38.3% on the Bruins that year) but had been brought to league average last year, improved again, but the bigger jump was in two-point field goal percentage. Mick Cronin made a lot of noise about not giving up easy layups, and that really played out in 2021-2022, as the Bruins only allowed opponents to make 47.3% of their two-point shots, well below league average and a huge improvement on the 50.4% they allowed last year. Part of that improvement? Blocks. UCLA improved its block rate by almost 2%, going from 7.9% to 9.6%. It’s a lot easier to hold opponents to a low FG% if you block almost 10% of all shots.
There were other areas of improvement. For example, the Bruins improved their turnover rate to 19.4%, which is a 2% jump from the year prior. Staying consistent was the rebounding, particularly UCLA’s ability to keep opponents off the offensive glass. The biggest jump might have been in steal percentage, where the Bruins saw a 3% increase from the prior year to go to 10.3%.
Combine all this together, and you can see why UCLA had a top-level defense. Almost 20% of the time, the opponent was going to turn the ball over. Add in the block rate, and you end up with a defense that was not letting 30% of opposing possessions end with a shot that had a chance of going in. Much like with the offense, if you limit the number of possessions where your opponent gets a clean look at the basket, you’re going to win a lot of basketball games.
Much more than the offense, the defensive end is where UCLA saw the biggest leaps in improvement. Johnny Juzang, for all his offensive struggles at times this season, was much more locked in on the defensive end and turned into one of UCLA’s best rebounders. Jules Bernard, similarly, saw improvement in his defense that kept him on the floor longer. The Bruins had three all-defensive team placements in Jaime Jaquez, Myles Johnson, and Jaylen Clark, and only Jaquez was a consistent starter of the three. Not bad at all.
I do think there’s room for improvement, but a lot of that will have to do more with attrition than anything else. Cody Riley grew into a fine Bruin, but he was defensively limited, and replacing him with incoming freshman Adem Bona, along with getting more minutes for Johnson, should lead to improvements. Similarly, Juzang’s potential departure removes one poor defender and replaces him with a bevy of options with more defensive acumen. There may be some growing pains as some of the pieces get used to a bigger role, but the ceiling for next year’s defense should be even higher, which is crazy to think about.
That’s all for this part. Next time, we’ll look to the future and see what it holds for the program.
Go Bruins!
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Kyman to Wyoming. Good for him. Hope he plays a big role in leading them to the tournament next year.