All ball Sports: UCLA: More March Madness
by Paul Teetor
Survive and advance.
That’s the unofficial motto of the NCAA basketball tournament, and that’s exactly what UCLA did Saturday night: survive and advance to the Sweet 16.
Barely.
The second seeded Bruins were tied with 7th seeded Northwestern at 45-45 with 11 minutes left before finishing strong for a 68-63 victory that was even closer than the final score indicated.
While the Bruins celebrated the hard-fought victory – and it was in doubt until the very last minute – the truth is that they will have to play much better to beat third-seeded Gonzaga Thursday night in a re-match of the legendary semifinal game they played two years ago.
As expected, UCLA rolled right over 15th seeded UNC Asheville in their first-round game Thursday night. The game was so lop-sided that they never missed their two best defensive players – guard Jaylen Clark and center Adem Bona – who were both out with injuries.
But it was a very different story against Northwestern in the next game. Clark, recently named the PAC-12 Defensive Player of the year, will not play again this year due to a foot injury.
But Bona, who injured his left shoulder during the PAC-12 Tournament, was able to return for the Northwestern game, and made a big impact.
His primary assignment, 7-footer Matthew Nicholson, led the Wildcats in scoring with 17 points. But without the 6-foot-9 Bona there to harass him at every turn, Nicholson easily could have scored 30, and led the Wildcats to an upset victory.
Bona made the biggest play of the game with 1:52 to play when he blocked a Nicholson jump shot attempt. The Bruins point guard Tyger Campbell grabbed the loose ball off the floor, raced up court, and found guard David Singleton for an open three-point shot that swished right through the net, and gave UCLA some breathing room, with a six-point lead.
“You gotta be able to play situational winning basketball,” Coach Mick Cronin said. “And that’s what Adem and David did: play situational winning basketball.”
As it has all year in winning the PAC-12, UCLA relied on a simple formula: play ferocious, relentless defense every second of every minute, and rely on its three seniors – slick point guard Campbell, deadeye shooter Singleton, and gritty forward Jaime Jacquez to set the tone and carry the load.
Singleton delivered the single biggest shot of the night with his late three-pointer, Jacquez had one of his best games of the year with 24 points, 8 rebounds and four assists, and Campbell came through at the foul line late in the game when he went 12 for 12, off-setting his 0 for 7 stat line on field goal attempts.
When they play Gonzaga Thursday night in Las Vegas, it will mark the third straight year the Bruins have made it to the sweet 16.
Two years ago they were knocked out in a Final Four semifinal game.
Last year they were knocked out in a Sweet Sixteen game.
It says here that the third time is the charm: UCLA will go on to win its first NCAA title since 1995.
The UCLA women got in on the March madness fun and excitement too. They beat Oklahoma 82-73 Monday night to advance to the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Women’s Tournament. The Bruins were led by Charisma Osborne’s career-high 36 points in her last home game at Pauley Pavilion before she embarks on what is sure to be a great WNBA career. Next up: a chance for an epic upset when the Bruins will face the consensus number one team in the nation, top-seeded South Carolina.
USC: More March Sadness
One and done.
That was the story – as usual – for the USC men’s basketball team in the NCAA tournament this past weekend.
Trojan fans sat down in front of their TV’s ready for their annual dose of disappointment Friday morning when 10th seeded USC took on seventh-seeded Michigan State in the East Regional held at Columbus, Ohio.
And for the second year in a row they got what they expected: USC was booted from the big dance before they even had a chance to get their mojo warmed up.
Last March it was Miami who knocked them out in the first round, and this year it was Michigan State.
The opponents change, but one thing stays the same with the Trojans: the coach.
After a decade of mediocrity on the hardwood, maybe it’s time for USC to move on from men’s basketball coach Andy Enfield.
It’s not that he’s a terrible coach. He’s not. He presents well, knows his x’s and o’s, recruits hard and looks like a good sportsman when he’s shaking hands with the coach who just beat him.
In this case, it was Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, a pugnacious, in-your-face kind of guy who tore his white board in half at one point in the second half when his players failed to carry out his instructions.
Which is exactly the kind of thing Enfield would never do – publicly during a game or privately in the locker room. And that’s the problem: just as UCLA has taken on the fiery personality of its hard-boiled Coach Mick Cronin, USC teams have taken on Enfield’s laid-back, too-cool-for-school persona.
The predictable 72-62 loss to Michigan State gave the Trojans and their big-buck boosters a taste of what they’re going to be dealing with on a regular basis when their teams start playing in the Big Ten in 2024.
And the brutal truth is that Enfield’s teams are too soft to win in the NCAA Tournament, and way too soft to win in the Big 10.
So before the Trojans start playing regularly in the Big Ten in the fall of 2024, they need to absorb the lesson they were taught Friday morning by Michigan State: come out fighting and never let up.
It’s not about looking good. It’s about playing defense like your life is on the line and playing offense like you don’t care who scores the buckets as long as your team gets the win.
As usual with Enfield’s teams, USC fell behind early and spent the rest of the game playing catch-up and never quite getting there.
This time they dug themselves an 11-point hole while standing around on offense and offering little resistance to an aggressive Michigan State squad on defense.
The Trojans looked to team leaders Boogie Ellis and Drew Peterson to create offense for themselves and other players, but neither the quicksilver guard nor the solid, steady forward were able to get themselves going, either by manufacturing shots for themselves or creating shots for their teammates.
Ellis, one of the most explosive guards in the PAC-12, was out of sorts from the start, missing shots he normally makes and ending up with six points on a horrendous shooting performance as he hit only three of twelve shots.
Peterson wasn’t much better, connecting on four of 10 shots to finish with 11 points and seven rebounds.
Both of them took bad shots, a problem that spread to their teammates as the deficit worsened. Yet in his post-game presser Enfield acted like it was just another day at the office. “It’s hard to not make timely shots and turn the ball over,” he said. “It was our guys losing the ball. The scoring droughts are usually either you miss open shots or guys try to do too much on their own, instead of just moving the ball and spacing and cutting. I know there’s a lot of pressure on these guys. The second half we got down. It is frustrating at times throughout the season. But for the most part our guys played the right way.”
Huh?
What he seemed to be saying was that his players played badly, but at least they played badly the right way.
Although the Trojans managed to tie the score at halftime, the second half started the same way as the first half: Peterson and Ellis took and missed bad shots, the rest of the team followed suit, and soon they were down by 10 points once again.
The scariest part about this loss was that both Ellis and Peterson are now done with their Trojan careers. Unless Enfield pulls off a recruiting coup and hires another All-Star father like Eric Mobley for his coaching staff, it’s hard to see how the Trojans can even duplicate their third-place finish in the PAC-12 next year.
Mobley, for those with short memories, was hired as an assistant coach back in 2018. Enfield insisted the job offer had nothing to do with trying to recruit Mobley’s two sons, Isiah and Evan, both 6-foot-11 five-star recruits.
Yet shockingly, both committed to USC shortly after their father was hired. Two years ago they led USC to the Elite Eight, its best NCAA finish in the entire decade Enfield has been leading the team.
But since that was the same year UCLA went to the Final Four and came within a 40-foot miracle buzzer-beater by Gonzaga’s Jalen Suggs of making the championship game, that accomplishment didn’t get much attention.
Of course, Evan Mobley left after his freshman year, after he pulled off a rare triple double: he was named PAC-10 freshman of the year, PAC-12 Player of the year, and PAC-12 Defensive Player of the year.
After that season he was picked third in the NBA draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers, was named Rookie of the Year, and is now regarded as a sure-fire future NBA All-Star.
Now that the two Mobley brothers have come and gone, the cupboard is bare for the Trojans as they prepare to make the big switch to the Big Ten after next season.
At some point USC Athletic Director Mike Bohn must face the hard question: Is nice guy Andy Enfield the right guy to lead them into that brave new athletic world?
The answer, unfortunately, is no.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor. ER