UCLA Basketball: Insider Projects Landing Spot In Preseason 2024 March Madness Bracket

After losing three stars to the NBA draft, it appears that your UCLA Bruins are in for a bit of a rude awakening in the 2023-24 NCAA season. If early preseason punditry is to be believed, at least.

UCLA is coming off a terrific 31-6 2022-23 season that saw them enter the Big Dance as a second seed, but its prospects of an encore performance this year appear a bit murky.

After vanquishing UNC Asheville in an 86-53 first round walloping, UCLA proceeded to give the 68-63 boot to poor Northwestern, appearing in just its second-ever NCAA Tourney. It was in the Sweet 16 where the Bruins ran into some major trouble, as Jaime Jaquez Jr. and co. fell 79-73 to the Gonzaga Bulldogs.

In an early preseason March Madness bracket, courtesy of ESPN's Joe Lunardi, the Bruins are expected to kick off the 2024 tournament as a seventh seed. This represents quite the dip from the second seed, but given the personnel changes internally, framed within the context of a rapidly-shifting collegiate landscape increasingly contingent on the whims of one-and-done superstars, perhaps it's ultimately to be expected.

At least as a hypothetical seventh seed the Bruins would be favored against their opponents, the 10th seed, in the Round of 64. For Lunardi, that's the Indiana Hoosiers, who despite adding five-star recruit Mackenzie Mgbako are also expected to decline this year.