UCLA Collapses Against Southern Cal Again, This Time Loses 77-64
The offense is officially a problem.
If I’m Mick Cronin, I might consider a new halftime approach.
For the second meeting in a row, the UCLA Bruins took a substantial lead into halftime against Southern Cal, and for the second game in a row, the Bruins spent the entire second half throwing all that good work in the trash, playing lackluster defense and continuing their offensive woes en route to a 77-64 loss.
I’m not sure what stood out the most in this trash heap of a second half, but I do want to talk about the offense first because we are officially in problem territory. UCLA shot 35.7% in this game, but more importantly, was a miserable 8-27 (29.6%) in that all-important second half when Southern Cal turned up the pressure. The Bruins seemed bothered by the length of the Trojans, which is a worrying trend when you take last week into account, with Tyger Campbell again looking flustered on his usual selection of runners and Jaime Jaquez putting up a thoroughly-average performance in a big rivalry game. Southern Cal seemingly decided to put the onus on David Singleton to beat them, forcing the senior into the most shot attempts on the team, and for the most part this worked, as Singleton shot an inefficient 5-14 from the field, consistently looking like he struggled to adjust. Most distressing has to be the play of Jaylen Clark, who has fallen off a cliff these past few weeks and may have put up his worst performance in this one, going 0-7 on the field and missing a variety of bunnies near the basket.
The scary thing is this doesn’t appear to be a schematic issue. Just like with the Arizona game last week, UCLA was able to generate a lot of open looks at the basket, and especially in the first half used their trademark effort to get a lot of extra looks at the basket through second-chance points. Simply put, the shots just aren’t falling. If you throw in the out-of-character turnovers, I’m willing to chalk a lot of these issues up to the team pressing too much on offense and not playing loose. I don’t know if this is a symptom of the increased defensive focus or just a lack of focus at the midpoint of the conference slate, but an extended break followed by a visit from one of the worst teams in the conference in Washington is coming at the exact right time.
The defense was not great in this one. I think we’re starting to see the limitations of the team’s defense, specifically that it can struggle when the players are not completely locked in. UCLA has more than a few poor defenders throughout the lineup (especially Campbell, who the Trojans targeted relentlessly in the second half) and has gotten by thanks to an excellent defensive effort from everyone involved. When that effort is lacking like it did tonight, then things break down. Jaime Jaquez was one of the prime culprits on this front today, as he constantly made bad switches and looked disinterested in the entire concept of competing on that end. Jaylen Clark was not his usual disruptive self, and poor Adem Bona was left trying to clean up a lot of messes.
You don’t need advanced stats to tell you that the effort in the second half was lacking. Southern Cal scored 52 points in that half, almost doubling what UCLA was able to put up. That’s embarrassing and should cause a lot of players to look in the mirror and reevaluate the things they’re doing on both ends of the court. The Trojans scored 1.677 points per possession in the second half, which is absurd and speaks to how bad the Bruins were.
If there is a big positive to take from this game, it’s the return of Amari Bailey, and Bailey probably had the best overall game of any Bruin. You could see he was a bit tentative in his first game back in a month, but the effort was clearly there and he did score in double-digits. I have to imagine he slides back into the starting lineup next week, which should help fix some things for the rotation. I say that because Cronin really did not utilize the bench outside of Bailey. Will McClendon saw all of three minutes while Dylan Andrews, who the Bruins desperately could have used for his energy alone, did not see the court at all. Interestingly, Mac Etienne was finally the first big man off the bench for Cronin, but he did not look great, and ultimately Kenneth Nwuba would beat him out for backup minutes in this game.
Much like the team, I don’t really have the energy to finish this off with a Three Takeaways like normal. But I would like to take this opportunity to talk some Bruin fans off the ledge. Yes, the Bruins have now lost two in a row after running off a streak of 14 straight wins. This is about the same time every year that the Bruins start to look a bit of a mess before they refocus for the final stretch. I don’t think there is any long-term problems that we’re seeing at the moment, though there are some red flags to consider for March. That said, we’re still over a month away from that, and there’s plenty of basketball still to play. Despite these past few games, UCLA is still in the driver’s seat for the conference, as they’re still a game up on everyone else. The margin for error has closed a bit, but that’s why you have a margin in the first place.
Jaime Jaquez led the team with 15 points and eight rebounds. Tyger Campbell led the team with seven assists. Boogie Ellis led the Trojans with 31 points.
The Bruins will take the next week off to refocus before hosting Washington next Thursday. Tip-off is scheduled for 6:00 PM PT.
Go Bruins.
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UCLA didn’t fall as far as I thought they would in their efficiency rankings. Not too surprising since it was two losses on the road to quality opponents. UCLA only has good losses. They unfortunately haven’t beat any teams that are currently ranked either.
The sky isn’t falling, but ucla basketball hasn’t been fun to watch in several weeks. Clark going 0-7 is a big part of why ucla lost this game. UCLA scored all of 6 points in the first 10 minutes of the second half. Jaylen Clark is a huge problem because he’s needed to be on the court for his defensive energy. The problem with him being on the court is that he seems to disappear offensively against high quality teams. When ucla plays with 4 players on offense, it’s much easier to defend because the opposition can just double jaquez, put a fast guard on the other perimeter guard to prevent the three ball, put a big on bona who just stands there trying to make picks for tyger to dribble and put up a floater… it’s just too easy to defend when Clark is worthless on offense.
The iso offense only works when every player on the court is a threat. Bona and Clark are not currently a threat. Something new needs to be done.
Usc played amazing offensive basketball in the second half, but that’s also the trend against them in both games. Other teams have realized that they can just switch a fast guard to jaquez or bona and exploit the mismatch. Clark gets switched to a player that just goes and stand in the corner making his value on defense non-existent as well. UCLA can’t be switching all the time. I’ve seen several times in this whole month that tyger switches to guard their big man underneath while bona or jaquez stay on the small guard at the perimeter. Teams have started to figure out how to attack tyger. This is why a defensive minded team that is struggling to score would be better with Andrews on the court… of course he was sick last night.
I hope that mick can make the offensive and defensive changes needed to turn this around. He was yelling at the refs a lot last night and should have had more than one technical thrown his way. The game wasn’t reffed poorly for a change… ucla just sucked
It's more than the offense is a problem. The whole team is a problem.
Yeah, the offense has sucked. When was the last time the Bruins played 40 minutes of consistently good offense against a decent opponent? Nothing really stands out to me, which suggests that if/when they did, it was the exception and not the rule. They looked lost for a lot of the game, including all the second half, suggesting that they have no recognition and no answers when other teams turn up their intensity. The adjustments are nonexistent, the shot selection is bad, the shooting is abysmal, and there is no go to guy to put the team on his back and weather the storm.
But last night the defense sucked too, and that worries me even more. Defense is this team's calling card, and that's what has saved us in previous games like WSU and CU when the offense went cold, and it's what eventually kick started the offense back to life in those games. But last night the team defense was lazy and disinterested and apathetic, and another rando got hot and singlehandedly outscored us in the second half. We saw one guy beat us with Illinois and UNC last tourney. When one guy is beating you, you'd like to see the team (players and coaches) do something to address that, but they don't. It's even worse when it's like AZ and a few guys become threats. Shooting can have an off night but defense and effort don't have to. The fact that this team is letting it happen is really concerning.
And the coaching sucked. Yes we have some veterans, but I expect a coach's view of the game from the sideline to be a lot clearer than the view of the game from the floor by a kid, and Cronin has done a crap job lately when the team needed someone to fix things when they started to come apart in the game. He is the one who needs to recognize who is hot, who is not, who is engaged, who is checking out, how to use the bench, how the game flows, and which direction his five on the floor are taking. So the fact that we are now consistently having bad shooting, lackadaisical spells on defense, horrible second half starts, and the absence of a top end offensive talent on this roster falls on him. I especially don't like hearing him blame the players and the referees after another loss due to the same old problems that he isn't fixing. There's one constant in this program now, and that constant is the head coach, and he needs to start making more positive differences during the game.