UCLA Men's Basketball 2024 Post-Mortem Part 1: What Went Wrong

We begin our post-mortem by taking an in-depth look at the main culprit for a disappointing UCLA basketball season.

Lazar Stefanovic (Photo credit: Scott Chandler/uclabruins.com)

---

You should know that I’ve been writing this post-mortem in my head for weeks, and even now I’ve written most of this before the first game of the Pac-12 Tournament even started. The realities of this year’s UCLA basketball team have been set in stone long before they got on a plane to Vegas, and the Pac-12 Tournament is merely a capstone on what has been an ultimately fruitless year. There are positives to take away, to be sure, but most of this year’s post-mortem will read more like an autopsy, trying to make sense of what happened and offering a salve regarding the future. I won’t sugarcoat things, but I also won’t go all doom and gloom over the entire situation.

If there is a major takeaway from this season, it is that we have likely seen the last of this particular iteration of the UCLA basketball roster. Change is coming, with players expected to move on and new ones taking their place. With that said, let’s start by identifying the main reason this UCLA season was a disaster.

A Failure of Roster Construction

We need to define what a failure of roster construction means in this scenario because this is not a case where Mick Cronin failed in the basics of that term i.e. did not bring in a point guard or something like that. The 2023-2024 UCLA basketball roster does possess all the requisite pieces and has backups at multiple spots in the lineup, something that was not necessarily the case in the previous few seasons (see, for example, Tyger Campbell and Jaime Jaquez playing almost every minute of every game because the Bruins lacked a backup point guard or wing that could provide meaningful minutes). No, when I say that this was a failure of roster construction, I am referring more to the makeup of that roster, specifically the youth present.

We made a lot of the youth on this team all season. Even from way back in the season preview, I said this:

There’s a lot of talent, but a lot of it is new to the college game and each other. There are going to be plenty of lapses on defense, and moments where the offense doesn’t click. There will be more turnovers, there will be more fouls, and there will be more shots of Cronin yelling on the sidelines. The veteran Cronin players on this team are mostly sophomores.

That sentiment mostly proved to be true. This team was young in a way that is rarely seen at the college level these days, and for good reason. It is not uncommon to see teams feature freshmen, but unless those freshmen are Lottery-level talents (see: Lonzo Ball and TJ Leaf) they usually are not thrust into major roles and are instead asked to supplement more veteran players while they get used to the rhythms of the college game. That’s what we saw from last year’s roster; Amari Bailey and Adem Bona had the talent to start and play significant minutes for the Bruins last year, but they were not asked to be major scorers or playmakers because the team already had Jaquez, Campbell, and Jaylen Clark for that. It allowed Bailey and Bona to adjust to the college game and focus on what they were good at. For Bona, that became his defense, while for Bailey it was learning how to score at this level, which paid off near the end of the season when he started scoring in double-digits with regularity against improved competition.

Which, since we’re talking about last year’s team, we should mention them as one of the reasons UCLA ended up this way in 2023-2024. It may shock you to learn that this past season was not the result of one singular mistake but rather a host of choices that added up until it became a runaway boulder. That said, part of the problem is that UCLA had an unprecedented run of success with the same bodies over three years. That’s a good thing, but while that was happening, UCLA was not seeing players leave the program. Sure, there were occasional departures, but Jaime Jaquez stayed for four years, as did Tyger Campbell. Johnny Juzang decided to return for his junior year rather than jump to the NBA after his ridiculous Final Four run. Cody Riley came back, as did David Singleton. The Bruins had a level of continuity that is almost unheard of in the modern age, and the only thing I can compare it to is the run Florida went on in the late 2000s (you know exactly what team I’m talking about). UCLA was able to parlay that continuity into success, with a Final Four run, three Sweet 16 appearances, a Pac-12 regular season title, and a team that would have been one of the few favorites to win a national title had it not suffered two devastating injuries in the final week of the season. That’s not bad by any stretch.

But continuity has its costs, and for UCLA, that meant missing out on other players to keep chasing a title. For example, Juzang’s return was a surprise and was not announced until late in the cycle, which meant UCLA did not have a scholarship available for a guard who desperately wanted to come here; KJ Simpson eventually went to Colorado where he flourished. Tyger Campbell’s continued presence scared off multiple point guard prospects, with Dylan Andrews only coming in with the understanding that he would only have to apprentice under Campbell for one season before taking over. With so many players sticking around, it meant fewer available scholarships in general, which Cronin used on high-talent players in an attempt to supplement the core (Peyton Watson, Amari Bailey*), which was a win-now option given that those players were unlikely to stick around past a season. The pursuit of success created a situation where sustainability was hard to build, and the few attempts at that like Mac Etienne ultimately washed out.

* - This really hurt in the case of Bailey, who the staff clearly felt was going to stick around another season but surprised everyone by remaining in the NBA Draft. This year’s team looks a lot different with Bailey and Andrews up top and likely would have comfortably been an NCAA Tournament team at worst. Such is life when you recruit highly-touted high school players.

And so the Bruins entered this season with only four returning players, only one of which had real starting experience while the other three had been depth pieces so far in their UCLA careers. This year’s team was always going to feature plenty of new faces, but in hindsight, UCLA should have gone harder in the transfer portal than it ultimately did. This is not to say that Mick Cronin did not try - we know he went hard after Cam Spencer though he ultimately chose UConn and its bigger NIL deal, and he famously lost Reese Dixon-Waters to San Diego State because he would not promise him a starting spot - but one of the running themes of the season was that this Bruin team lacked veteran leadership compared to previous years.

One thing successful coaches will always try to do is stay ahead of the curve, and in that way, I understand why Mick Cronin tried to zag while everyone else zigged and went heavy on European players. He saw a market inefficiency - Euro players are talented, usually have some level of professional basketball experience, and are not as expensive to recruit as high-level transfers or high school prospects - and given the resources at his disposal decided it was the best course forward for the program. That the experiment failed should not be an indictment of the process that led to it, but should prompt some reexamining of how Cronin and UCLA should approach talent acquisition in the future. The Euro Experiment was supposed to provide UCLA with transfer-level players who could slot in and play meaningful minutes from the word go, but that did not happen. Instead, only one of the four has played over 300 minutes on the season, and even the most prolific, Berke Buyuktuncel, has only managed to play the 7th most minutes on the team this season. What looked like an intriguing way forward before the season has turned into an anchor on UCLA’s ceiling, one that will likely be remedied this offseason.

Improved in Some Places, Deficient in Others

One thing I will say is that, removed from the context of how the roster was constructed, I thought Mick Cronin did a decent job with this roster. If you were to look at this roster objectively, you’d see a group that lacked a go-to scorer or really any significant offensive threats. The team also lacks a lot of the top-end athleticism or basketball IQ to be an elite defensive group. This is not to say the group is untalented, but much of that talent was either raw and undeveloped or had some talent but was not used to the pace of the college game.

If you’re looking for clear development successes, you have to start with Dylan Andrews. Andrews came into this season as the main point guard for the first time in his collegiate career but had a rough opening to the season. There were multiple calls to bench him or recruit over him this coming offseason, but then the light clicked midway through the season and Andrews transformed into one of the best players on the team. Andrews always possessed the physical talents to be a good guard, but he finally started tapping into those with a lethal free throw line jumper (modeled after trainer and friend Darren Collison) while playing hellacious on-ball defense. I don’t think its a coincidence that the two best players on this year’s team, and the ones that showed the most growth, also happened to be two players with multiple years under Cronin.

Speaking of that other player, Adem Bona did show marked improvement this season, specifically on the offensive end. He’s still not polished enough as a scorer to stick at the next level, especially without anything approaching a servicable jump shot (though his free throw shooting improved tremendously this year, indicating that a jump shot could be in his future), but there was marked improvement from where he was in his freshman year, where Bona’s offense consisted solely of lobs and put-backs. UCLA made an adjustment mid-season to run more of the offense through Bona on the block, and the results were much improved as Bona showed good awareness for how to attack a defense in those situations; if a double-team came, he would kick it out to an open shooter, and if it did not came, it gave him a one-on-one opportunity that he could take advantage of. Bona’s raw and per 40 numbers saw marginal improvement from last year, but considering the change in what he was asked to do and the change in his teammates, that improvement stands out. He still has room to grow as a basketball player, especially when it comes to picking up fouls, but the question will be if he remains at UCLA to continue that improvement or not.

Beyond that, UCLA saw a lot of scuffling play. Lazar Stefanovic was probably the most consistent of the rest but took awhile to find his play, eventually settling in offensively when he stopped trying to create and simply let the game come to him with catch-and-shoot or one-dribble pull-ups. His defense is not there currently, and he has a tendency to fall asleep and get backdoored more than anyone else on the team, but he turned himself into one of the more critical components of this year’s team. Which is probably not a great thing; I said before the season that the best version of UCLA likely featured Stefanovic coming off the bench, which is not meant as disrespect but more an acknowledgement of where his ceiling is as a player.

Sebastian Mack had a very freshman season. He started out incredibly strong and looked like the best option for Cronin to turn to on offense, but the length of the season and a series of nagging injuries clearly wore him down. Mack’s style on offense would best be described as a train barrelling down the track and hoping it makes enough contact to cause problems, which has some positives and negatives, but he was the main guy when it came to driving towards the basket. His defense similarly was up and down, as Mack would go through lulls where he did not give the effort only to suddenly show as one of the better defenders on the team. It was enough to be intriguing going forward, but Mack will have to put in a bunch of offseason work getting stronger and putting in more focus.

Will McClendon is going to get a brief recap here, because a lot of his season comes down to his knee. Specifically, McClendon played more minutes this year compared to the spot minutes he saw last year, and it only served to expose him and his lack of athleticism thanks to the knee injury he suffered during his freshman season. Jan Vide saw some increased play late in the season, especially in the Pac-12 Tournament, and he showed some intriguing potential. He really lacks in athleticism and that could limit his upside at this level against high-end guards, but he played some smart basketball down the stretch and there’s been reports of the staff raving about him in practices, so who knows. Like many on the team, he desperately needs to develop an outside shot to keep opponents honest.

The four spot was a black hole for the Bruins all season. Berke Buyuktuncel was slated to take this spot in the offseason but experienced delays related to being cleared by the NCAA that held him out at the start of the season. When he did start seeing action, he looked nothing like the player that looked so good during the FIBA U-18 tournament this past summer, instead looking slow and out of sorts having to continually play at the faster pace of college basketball. There was always going to be an adjustment period, but to go an entire season without any improvement is not a good look. It also meant Brandon Williams, a player that I thought would redshirt this year, got thrust into significant minutes early on, and he looked playable with some game that can improve with time, but he also looked very much like a freshman who needed another offseason of weight and conditioning work before he could play significant minutes. There were brief stretches of inspired play but more often than not Williams was just out there with the plan of trying not to screw up, which made it really easy to defend him on offense.

Aday Mara was the most fascinating player of the year for me. At the beginning of the year, it became obvious early that he was not ready for prime time, lacking in conditioning and understanding of what he had to do as a college big. It did not help that the staff wanted to make the two-big experiment work, and when it did not Mara fell down the depth chart because he’s simply unable to mimic the things that Adem Bona does defensively and it was much easier to have Kenny Nwuba do that instead. He started to see increased play in the latter half of the season and looked better, to the point where he was likely the better overall option as the backup to Bona. That said, I think if Mara comes back Cronin will likely adjust his defensive scheme so that he is playing more drop coverage and hovering more near the paint where he can use his length to his advantage. That’s one of the disadvantages of getting a player on campus as late as Mara came in, but one that could be fixed this offseason with work.

Ilane Fibleuil saw little play throughout the season, mostly acting as a quick defensive sub late in games. We knew he would be a bit of a project but there is now an open question of how much and if he is worth the effort. The staff did follow through on my belief in Devin Williams being a redshirt option this year, though he saw a little game time this season.

---

We will continue later this week with a discussion of the offensive and defensive strategies as a whole and a look at what the offseason could entail for UCLA.

Go Bruins!

---

Thanks again for supporting The Mighty Bruin. Your paid subscriptions make this site possible. Questions, comments, story ideas, angry missives and more can be sent to @TheMightyBruin on Twitter.