UCLA Defeats Southern Cal 69-59 to Advance to Pac-12 Tournament Final

The Other LA School wins the season series in the process. Hang the banner!

Tyger Campbell had a solid outing to help the Bruins advance in the Pac-12 Tournament. (Photo credit: @UCLAMBB)

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I’ve been trying to figure out what the focus of the post-game article for this game was going to be about for a good amount of time now. I even jumped on a Twitter Space with our good friends at No Truck Stops Podcast to talk about the game and came away from it still lost on what I wanted to focus on. But maybe that is what is interesting about this game in particular; it’s a Mirror of Erised situation where you can take from this game whatever you want.

Here are some various takeaways I had from UCLA’s 69-59 victory over Southern Cal to advance to the Pac-12 Tournament final, presented in no particular order:

UCLA is Rounding Into Tournament Form

If you were wondering how Mick Cronin was going to approach this game, then the insertion of Myles Johnson into the starting lineup told you everything you needed to know. Cronin seemingly understood that Johnson was a defensive nightmare that Southern Cal would have difficulty solving, and he was proven correct over the course of the game. Johnson played the vast majority of the minutes instead of Cody Riley in this game, including 16 minutes in the first half, and made life miserable for a Trojan squad that really likes to play on the interior.

The rotation decision between Johnson and Riley was just one of many moments in this game where it seemed like UCLA was playing like they were in tournament mode. Also consider:

• Cronin went to the Jaylen Clark - Myles Johnson defensive core to create some separation and added a new wrinkle by playing Peyton Watson with this group. When you add those three to Jaime Jaquez, you create a defense that is near-impenetrable for opposing offenses. It’s a trump card that Cronin seems comfortable employing when necessary.

• Peyton Watson going off. For a brief moment in time, Watson realized all of the potential UCLA fans saw in him, scoring five points and a wicked assist while playing shutdown defense, including a wicked block on Kobe Johnson. The moment eventually passed, but Watson basically stopped a mini-Trojan run all by himself.

• Johnny Juzang could not hit a shot for most of the game, but he was playing perhaps the best defense of his UCLA career, which kept him playable for most of the game. And if Juzang’s defense is keeping him on the court, then he will always be an offensive threat that teams have to worry about, and eventually, Juzang was able to go on a run of his own offensively to ultimately end up with a respectable 10 points.

• Oh, and we’re not even talking about Jaime Jaquez ascending into a higher being or Jules Bernard playing with the most confidence he has in over a month.

I mentioned yesterday that the Pac-12 Network crew had made a great point about this team looking more relaxed in a tournament environment, and that really seemed to play out again in this game. The Bruins are the healthiest they have been all season, and now that they’re back in a single-elimination environment, we’re seeing the return of the team that had everyone excited all offseason. That’s something that the rest of the country should be afraid of.

UCLA’s Defense is Locked In

Tied in a bit to that first takeaway, but UCLA is playing exceptional defense down the stretch here. Again, part of that has to do with the rise of Clark and Johnson, but the other Bruins are picking things up defensively as well, and it resulted in a game where Southern Cal just looked lost for the majority of the game offensively. The Trojans ended up shooting 39.6% from the field on the game, which was mostly buoyed by an otherworldly performance by Boogie Ellis in what was a continuation of the long tradition of a single Trojan player playing out of their mind against the Bruins. Southern Cal was held to only 59 points, was limited in second-chance opportunities, and was denied easy points at every opportunity.

The three-year transformation of the UCLA defense has been astronomical, going from 112th in Cronin’s first year, to 46th last year, to a ridiculous 11th this year per KenPom. This also isn’t a situation where one or two defenders enter the program and flip the defense - even guys who are marginal defenders like Tyger Campbell and Johnny Juzang have improved by leaps and bounds in the past few years, and the team is playing excellent team defense. The quality of this performance, in particular, was enough to jump UCLA up two spots in the NET rankings to 10th, while the Bruins are now 7th in KenPom, jumping three spots after the win. UCLA’s offense has remained consistently good over these few years, so it’s the defensive improvement that is driving this change.

And yes, I will again mention that the rise of the Johnson-Clark-Jaquez defensive core is providing Mick Cronin with a ridiculous check against almost every opponent, and if Watson proves to be a playable option to supplement that group, then it’s a trump card that teams will have little time to prepare for. Beware of this group.

UCLA Scored 69 Points

Nice.

Southern Cal…..Probably Isn’t Very Good

To be a bit of a downer here, I’m still pretty out on the Trojans in general and feel they were the third-best team in the conference mostly by virtue of the rest of the conference being fairly mediocre. That feeling was reinforced on Thursday when Southern Cal combined with Washington to put on one of the worst basketball games I have ever witnessed. Andy Enfield really finessed the Trojans into a contract extension, and you have to respect it.

It’s not that Southern Cal lacks in talent - really, they have some solid pieces - but the team really hasn’t improved over the course of the year, and it did not look like they had much in the way of a plan for what UCLA wanted to do. And that’s what makes it hard to take too much from this game, because for as good as UCLA looked for the majority of the game, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was partly due to Southern Cal regressing to the mean. There’s a reason advanced stats hates this team, after all.

Player of the Game: Jaime Jaquez

At halftime of this game, I flipped over to the Lakers game and watched Lebron James take his defender into the post before hitting a beautiful fade-away jumper. What stood out to me was that I had just watched Jaime Jaquez hit this exact same shot minutes prior. Jaquez is truly becoming a problem at the exact right time, again leading the team in scoring with an ultra-efficient 19 points on 6-9 (again, nice) shooting while going 7-8 from the free-throw line. I don’t think he’s at 100% health, but he has more than figured out how to play with his injured ankles, which makes him dangerous going into the NCAA Tournament.

The Bruins will now face their one true basketball rival Arizona in the Pac-12 Tournament final. Tip-off is scheduled for 6:00 PM PT.

Go Bruins!

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