UCLA vs. Gonzaga: Postgame Takeaways
The Bruins' pursuit of becoming the best team in the nation will have to go on a little longer.
No. 2 UCLA men's basketball (5-1) lost to No. 1 Gonzaga (6-0) 83-63 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Tuesday. The Final Four rematch was pegged as the game of the year leading up to tipoff, but the Bulldogs' hot start kept the Bruins from ever competing down the stretch.
These are three of the biggest takeaways, narratives and questions to come out of Tuesday's game.
No more wiggle room
Across the final 28 minutes of game time, UCLA outscored Gonzaga 53-50 and the two teams shot 44.4% and 46.9% from the field, respectively.
Looking at those numbers alone, it would seem like maybe this was another back-and-forth all-time classic like last year's Final Four. That couldn't be further from the truth.
The Bulldogs got off to an unfairly hot start, drilling 7 of their first 8 and 13 of their first 18 attempts. It took the Bruins over seven minutes of game time to even get a defensive rebound, since their opponent was taking and making easy shot after easy shot. All the while, they started 4-of-24 from the field on the other end.
UCLA had been in tight first-half games before – Villanova went on a 16-2 run to go up by as many as five before the break, while Long Beach State went up by a few points in the final minutes of the first period.
The Bruins wish the first half had been tight Tuesday, as they trailed by as many as 23 points – the largest deficit they've ever faced under coach Mick Cronin. And where UCLA has shown it can grind its way out of a close game, it has yet to prove it can dig itself out of a major hole.
Finding their footing, relatively speaking, after that opening 12-minute stretch was better than faltering from start to finish, but it clearly was far from enough.
Against inferior opponents – and even really good ones like Villanova – UCLA can afford to come out of the gates slow, since it's good enough to hang around early before flipping a switch late. Gonzaga is not one of those teams, and it showed.
For the Bruins to compete with elite teams moving forward, they can't sleepwalk through big stretches. If UCLA had shot as well during that ice cold 4-of-24 start as it did after, that's 15 more points they could have had, and all of a sudden it's a five-point game instead of a 20-point one.
If nothing else, Tuesday served as a rude awakening for the Bruins.
Missing Cody Riley
Gonzaga lost Corey Kispert, Jalen Suggs and Joel Ayayi to the pros since March Madness.
UCLA, on the other hand, was supposed to come into the rematch with everyone back, plus reinforcements. Key words being "supposed to."
Those reinforcements instead became replacements, as center Myles Johnson started in the place of the injured Cody Riley. The big man sprained his left MCL in the season opener and will remain out another week-plus, so Cronin was unable to utilize the post position the same way he did against the Bulldogs last year.
The Bruins surely could have used Riley on Tuesday, either in his role from last year or a new one.
As a passer and versatile defender, Riley simply brings a different skillset to the table as Johnson, as well as different intangibles. Riley is just infinitely better integrated into Cronin's system at this point, as Johnson constantly looks gun shy under the basket and lost on defense.
Johnson has the talent to fit in eventually, but it does not seem like he is there quite yet. Riley, we know is there, and having a more consistent and reliable presence down low would have done wonders for UCLA.
And then you add in the fact that Gonzaga was starting both All-American candidate Drew Timme and freshman phenom Chet Holmgren, and it would have been interesting to see if Cronin had gone with a two-post lineup of his own to match them. It hasn't really been a favorite lineup arrangement of his over the past two years, but maybe that would have changed if he had his full toolbox to work with Tuesday.
Slow to defend the fast break
Gonzaga had more turnovers than UCLA, and the Bulldogs still managed to get out on the break far more often and efficiently than the Bruins.
If you want to cut it down to live-ball turnovers, each team had four. Despite that, Gonzaga won the fast break point battle 18-5.
This isn't just a problem exclusive to the Gonzaga game, though.
For all the talk about this UCLA team pushing the tempo and sprinting down the court after every rebound, it has not showed up in the box score as of yet. In the Bruins' previous three contests leading up to Tuesday's headliner, they only outscored their opponents 7 to 6.3 on a per game basis.
This should be where Peyton Watson thrives. This should be where where Jules Bernard thrives. This should be where a team that emphasizes speed and tempo dominates its opponents.
That goes twofold on the other end, especially considering the lackluster performance trying to slow down the Bulldogs' attack. Gonzaga wound up with 2-on-1s, easy layups and open 3-pointers several times early on Tuesday.
To go back to the point about the one-sided start, the Bulldogs got 12 of their fast break points in a five-and-a-half-minute span in the first half, extending their lead from 16-8 to 33-10 in that time. So not only were the Bruins missing too many shots in that period, but they also weren't getting back on defense.
That clearly drove Cronin insane, and he said after the game that it was embarrassing how many layups his team was giving up.
"I got news for you – as good as Gonzaga is, if they come out, dribble the ball really fast down the court and lay it in seven times in the first half, I don't like our chances," Cronin said. "We didn't offer much in the way of resistance."
Stopping fast breaks doesn't have to do with any kind of mind-boggling schematic change or difficult-to-grasp zone concepts. It's just about getting a good first step, utilizing your athleticism and putting in effort.
The Bruins are going to need to lean on those a lot more heavily from now on.
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