NCAA Basketball: 3 over/under-ranked teams in preseason AP top 25 poll

Over-ranked: UCLA

There is absolutely no denying just how much credit the Bruins deserve for how their 2020-21 season concluded: they stunned the college basketball world after limping to an NCAA Tournament at-large bid, scraping past Michigan State in overtime, coasting by BYU and Abilene Christian, and toppling two national title contenders in Alabama and Michigan – and were just a Jalen Suggs buzzer-beater away from fighting Gonzaga in overtime in the Final Four.

Arguably, no player in last season’s March Madness made a name for himself like Johnny Juzang, who recorded the second-highest point total by an individual UCLA player in NCAA Tournament history at 137 points, just four shy of Gail Goodrich – and whose 29-point showing against Gonzaga was one of the best individual performances of the entire tournament.  Additionally, Juzang’s fellow starters – Tyger Campbell and Jaime Jaquez Jr., in particular – all excelled at different times for UCLA.

But this is where issues begin to arise when it comes to predicting exactly where the Bruins will end up in the 2021-22 season.  UCLA was slotted second in the preseason AP Top 25 poll, which marks the Bruins’ highest preseason ranking since matching that same rank ahead of the 2007-08 season – and their first time reaching that number since December of 2016.  Again, considering how last season ended, it should be completely understandable for why they are ranked this high.

But – with the exception of two significant roster additions in Rutgers big man Myles Johnson and five-star recruit Peyton Watson – this is, for all intents and purposes, the exact same UCLA team that stumbled, horrifically, through certain patches of the 2020-21 season.

An opening season loss at San Diego State was followed by a triple-overtime duel with Pepperdine, a 1-3 stretch through Pac-12 play in January and February saw the Bruins get blown out by USC, and a subsequent four-game winning streak was snapped by a four-game losing streak to end the regular season and the Pac-12 Tournament – and all of those events led to the Bruins nearly missing out on the NCAA Tournament.  For a team that entered the season ranked 22nd nationally and was deemed the preseason favorite in the Pac-12, that was less than ideal.

It is easy to ignore those woes now, considering what the Bruins accomplished in the tournament itself – but the problems are undeniably still there.  UCLA was average on the defensive end throughout the season, ranking 164th in 3P%, 197th in 2P%, and 189th in effective FG%, and surrendering 0.91 points per possession – and the offense was not that much better by comparison, checking in at 0.96 points per possession.

For the Bruins to be successful, there must be better individual performances on the offensive end – ranging from Juzang and Campbell improving their lackluster three-point shooting percentage to Campbell and Bernard becoming more reliable two-point shooters (where they maintain sub-50% clips).

As a team, the Bruins must be smarter and more deliberate in their shot selection; maintaining an offensive that takes 19 seconds off the shot-clock before an attempt that ultimately results in a two-point shooting clip that ranks 144th in the nation is simply inexcusable.

UCLA is more than deserving of being ranked among the nation’s top teams – but being deemed the second-best team in the country, all the while receiving eight first-place votes, is a bit much for a team that struggled to consistently prove themselves last season – and during the last few years, as well.  November 12th’s duel with Villanova will tell much about if UCLA’s deep postseason run was a fluke – but so will whether the Bruins’ have the ability – or inability – to claim easy wins over weaker teams.