A year after earning a two-seed and reaching the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAA Tournament, the 2023-24 season was always going to be difficult for the UCLA Bruins. The team lost the foundational quartet of Jaime Jaquez Jr., Tyger Campbell, Jaylen Clark, and David Singleton to the professional ranks, leaving a young and inexperienced team for head coach Mick Cronin in his fifth season in LA.
After an ugly mid-season stretch that saw this team lose eight times in nine games, the Bruins have turned things around. While UCLA is 14-14, this squad is 9-8 in Pac-12 play — good enough for fifth place in the conference. Bart Torvik's T-Ranketology currently gives the Bruins just a 1.5% chance to win the Pac-12 Tournament, but those odds jump to about 7% when accounting for UCLA' improved efficiency as of late. Here is why the Bruins are a sleeper team in the Pac-12 Conference Tournament.
Recent offensive improvement
At one point, this seemed to be a lost season for the Bruins. UCLA was 6-10 and just 1-4 in Pac-12 play. The team lost at home to Cal-State Northridge and its best win was against Oregon State (last place in the conference). But since then, Mick Cronin's squad has won eight of 12 contests, including a six-game winning streak that featured victories of Colorado and Oregon. A recent three-game skid has tempered expectations a bit, but UCLA has turned a corner.
Over the final four games of that ugly run, the Bruins scored just 0.81 points per possession while hitting 18.6% of their three-pointers. Through the first 16 games of the season, UCLA was 287th in the country in adjusted offensive efficiency. In 12 games since, this team ranks a respectable 61st — scoring 15 more points per 100 possessions. The Bruins went from hitting 28% of their threes to shooting 35% from beyond the arc.
Combined that offensive improvement with a defense that was already in the top 60, and the Bruins have suddenly become difficult to beat in Pac-12 play. A pair of big upcoming games against Washington State and Arizona could prove whether UCLA is a real contender or not, but the Bruins have shown enough recently to be a team to avoid in the Pac-12 Tournament.
Matching up well with Arizona
While the Arizona Wildcats are not unbeatable as some might believe (as shown by Washington State), it has still taken something special to defeat Tommy Lloyd's team this season. Stanford needed to shoot a blistering 16-25 from deep to beat the Wildcats (with Arizona going 7-26) while Oregon State had 12 made threes to Arizona's three in an upset win at the end of January. The Pac-12 leaders are the only team in the conference currently in the top 30 NET Rankings (4th) while offering a top 15 offense and defense according to KenPom.
Other than WSU, no team came closer to beating the Wildcats at home than the UCLA Bruins. Coach Cronin's team led by as many as 19 points in the first half and still carried a double-digit lead with three-quarters of the game complete. The Bruins ended up losing by six, but UCLA proved that it could hold its own with the best team in the league despite being a nearly 20-point underdog.
As the projected five-seed, a pair of Pac-12 Tournament wins would likely lead to a semifinal rematch with the Wildcats. With an improved offense to go with the second-best defensive efficiency in conference play, you have to like UCLA's upset chances.
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