UCLA Basketball: A look at Bruins thrilling win over Utah Utes
Defense
In Mick Cronin’s post game press conference after the 72-70 win over Utah, the Bruins head coach seemed disgusted over the defense the Bruins were showing. Mainly commenting on how they are not keeping in front of the ball, and talked about how they were making it too easy for opponents. However, he did give credit to Utah’s offensive attack.
“You have to give Utah a lot of credit. They were hard to defend and took us late in the clock a lot, and took us to 25 seconds on defense many times.”
After the game, UCLA’s defensive efficiency dropped to 68th in the nation on KenPom, a worrisome sight for Mick Cronin. During his tenure at Cincinnati, he never had a team outside of the top 50 defensively nation-wide.
However, UCLA’s offense jumped up to #11, and still playing one of the slower paces in all of college basketball (345th) they are a tough team to plan for. Few teams that play that slow of a tempo are as good as the Bruins are offensively, which will be a challenge for a lot of teams who are used to getting more possessions.
In a very ‘Cronin-esque’ way, being the defensive mind that he is, stated this after the win, “Right now, we are trying to outscore teams, that’s why we aren’t where we need to be.”
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The Bruins have Colorado on Saturday and then travel to Tempe to face Arizona State on January 7th in what will be a very fun mashup of styles. UCLA has a 2-0 start in PAC-12 play.