Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Bruinbaskets's avatar

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

Expand full comment
gbruin's avatar

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.

Expand full comment
23 more comments...

No posts