Previewing Michigan Basketball’s Next Game Against UCLA

The 23-1 Michigan Wolverines will return home to take on the 17-7 UCLA Bruins. They are coming off a road win over Northwestern where they won in dramatic, come from behind fashion, to retain their 2-game lead over the rest of the Big Ten in the conference standings. UCLA is coming off a close win over Washington and now will have to travel to Ann Arbor to take on the 2nd ranked Michigan Wolverines. Let’s dive more into this matchup below.

UCLA Bruins

For UCLA offensively, they are 10th in the Big Ten in scoring average per game, 6th in shooting percentage from the field, 1st in 3-point shooting percentage, 9th in assists, and 2nd in turnovers per game. The obvious thing that sticks out there is their 3-point shooting prowess and lack of turnovers offensively. This is a good UCLA offense and they play sound basketball to avoid turnovers.

On defense, UCLA is 8th in opponent scoring average per game, 7th in opponent shooting percentage from the field, 2nd in opponent 3-point percentage allowed, 14th in rebounding, 6th in steals, and 9th in blocks per game. Typically known as a very good defensive squad under Head Coach Mick Cronin, this team is no exception. They aren’t elite at defense, but they are good to really good at defense at least compared to other Big Ten teams. Scoring on them might be a challenge if Michigan plays like it did against Northwestern on Wednesday night.

Individually, UCLA is led by Tyler Bilodeau at 18.3 points per game, followed by Donavan Dent at 13.7, Skyy Clark at 13.5, Trent Perry at 12.6, and Eric Dailey Jr. at 11.3 points per game. This is a balanced unit offensively in terms of the starting lineup but they don’t have a lot of depth beyond that. Bilodeau is one of the top Big Ten scorers this year and keeping him in check will be a good challenge for Michigan.

Michigan Wolverines

Michigan offensively is still tops in the Big Ten in scoring average per game, 1st in shooting percentage from the field, 6th in 3-point shooting percentage, 2nd in assists, and 16th in turnovers. They are an elite offensive unit, limited only by their turnovers at least statistically. Given that UCLA doesn’t turn the ball over much on average and Michigan does quite frequently, the turnover numbers for each team will go a long ways in determining who wins this game and by how much.

Michigan defensively is 4th in the Big Ten in points surrendered per game, 1st in opponent shooting percentage from the field, 1st in opponent 3-point percentage allowed, 1st in rebounding, 7th in steals, and 1st in blocks per game. Obviously, Michigan’s defense has been an elite unit for them this year, and is possibly the premier defensive unit in the entire country.

Individually they’re led in scoring by Yaxel Lendeborg at 14.3 points per game, Morez Johnson Jr. at 13.5, Aday Mara at 11.4, Trey McKenney at 10.2, Elliot Cadeau at 9.9, and Nimari Burnett at 9.1. The overall depth and balance of Michigan’s scoring is better than the Bruins as they get significantly more scoring contributions from their bench than UCLA does. That will be something to watch in this game as well.

When looking at each team’s statistics, a few things stood out to me that make this game interesting. The first thing is the turnover disparity between these teams. Michigan likes to really push the ball and force the issue offensively and UCLA does the exact opposite by pulling it back and taking care of the basketball. What that turnover disparity ends up being in this game will tell us a lot about who will ultimately win this game. Another thing that stood out is the 3-point shooting percentage for UCLA’s offense, and the 1st ranked Big Ten opponent 3-point shooting percentage of the Wolverines defense. That will be another key thing to look at in terms of who ends up winning this game.

Michigan will need to play much better than they did against Northwestern to come out with a win as UCLA is a quality team. I do think Michigan will have the advantage in this game, especially being at home, but their only loss of the season so far this year also came at home as well. I think Michigan bounces back here and gets another nice win over a good UCLA team as they enter a very tough stretch of their schedule next week with a game at Purdue on Tuesday and then in Washington D.C. against the Duke Blue Devils the following Saturday.