UCLA Basketball: Bruins Can Look Into Their Own Backyard For 2025, '26 Prospects
UCLA Bruins head coach Mick Cronin signed a seven-man recruiting class in 2024 which featured only one player from Southern California (Devin Williams).
The results thus far have been mixed. Emphasizing European recruiting may have had to do with NIL money. The local pool of talent in Southern California, and as an extension the West Coast may have been a bit down.
In the classes of 2025 and 2026, that's certainly not the case.
The state of California has always been among the best at producing high-level basketball players. In recent memory, you've seen the likes of James Harden, Jrue Holiday, Russell Westbrook, Paul George, Kawhi Leonard, Brook Lopez, DeMar DeRozan and Klay Thompson all hail from Southern California.
In recent years under Mick Cronin, UCLA has also certainly benefitted from recruiting from its backyard (Jaime Jaquez Jr., Johnny Juzang, Amari Bailey, Jaylen Clark, David Singleton, Peyton Watson).
The next step is getting back to the point where the roster is heavy with local prospects. As it currently stands, the only Southern California natives on the roster are the aforementioned Williams and starting point guard Dylan Andrews.
UCLA does have one signee in its 2024 class -- a talented guard from nearby Corona named Eric Freeny.
As broken down by both LA Times reporter Ben Bolch and basketball guru Dinos Trigonis, the next two classes in Southern California are LOADED.
Guard Brandon Burries, forward Nik Khamenia, power forward Tounde Yessoufou, guard Jovani Ruff, shooting guard Mazi Mosley, guard Elzie Harrington, SF Dillan Shaw, center Maper Maker, small forward Jasir Rencher, forward Alec Blair and forward AJ Dybantsa are all Top 100 prospects nationally who hail from the state of California (according to 247Sports).
Among this group, UCLA has offers reportedly out to Burries, Ruff, Mosley, Harrington, Khamenia and Yessoufou. In terms of UCLA being a favorite with some of these prospects, the most likely to become Bruins could be within the group of Burries, Mosley, Khamenia and Yessoufou.
The class of 2026 might be even better. Specifically speaking about Southern California, there are four prospects -- point guard Brandon McCoy, guard Jason Crowe Jr., small forward Tajh Ariza and guard Alijah Arenas -- who are always clumped together with one another.
All of these prospects are considered to be the Top 10 prospects nationally in their class. McCoy (1), Arenas (4), and Crowe Jr. (5) are in the top five. If a couple of those surnames are familiar, it's because Arenas and Ariza are the sons of former NBA players Gilbert Arenas and Trevor Ariza, respectively.
UCLA has extended offers to all four prospects and is pursuing each of them quite heavily at the moment.
