LOS ANGELES — Throughout their 82-79 win over Oregon at Pauley Pavilion on Thursday night, the UCLA Bruins had holes in their defense. The Ducks found them and collected buckets with ease.
But UCLA’s gifted offense was too much. That’s often the case.
Ken Pomeroy has compiled stats on his website, KenPom.com, since the 2001-02 season. Every team that has won a national title during that stretch has finished in the top 25 in his adjusted defensive efficiency ratings. The lowest finish in the statistic among those championship teams during the KenPom.com era was by North Carolina’s title-winning squad in 2008-09, when it ranked 21st.
Entering Thursday’s game, UCLA was ranked 114th.
One hundred and fourteenth.
The Bruins don’t play the brand of defense that has fueled the dreams of recent national champions. And based on their start against Oregon on Thursday night, they can’t. They won’t. Not this year.
On Tuesday, Steve Alford said he wants his team to play fast and aggressive because that’s how they earned the title of America’s most efficient offense on KenPom.com. But he also said he wants the Bruins to get stops without surrendering their pace.
On Thursday, this talented roster demonstrated the same defensive challenges that have complicated their ambitions all season. They were down 37-18 in the first half after the Ducks started 4-for-7 from the 3-point line. The Ducks committed just one turnover in the first 20 minutes.
By the second half, Dillon Brooks was toying with Alford’s defensive adjustments, which included moving Lonzo Ball to the top of a zone that created only more pockets for the Ducks to exploit.
Brooks would just wait until T.J. Leaf or another UCLA big man switched. They all looked terrified.
Would Brooks drive? Would he penetrate and kick out? Or would he just hit a 3-pointer?
He picked the latter on two of the first three possessions in the second half. He scored the team’s first eight points after the break.
Game over, right?
But then UCLA’s shots began to fall, and Pauley Pavilion rose as Bryce Alford hit clutch buckets and Ball played like the No. 1 pick in this summer’s NBA draft. The attempts that bounced off the rim in the first half found the cylinder in the second.
See, this is why UCLA is so fascinating. Everything about the numbers suggests Steve Alford’s program will never defend like a team must when it’s pursuing a national championship. They can’t make a trade and fix this.
The Bruins are who we thought they were on defense.
But they’re also like few teams we’ve ever seen on offense.
Oregon isn’t a good defensive team. Oregon is one of America’s best defensive teams. This is the team that gave up just 58 points to Arizona last weekend.
When UCLA blew on the cartridge and put it back into the Nintendo, however, the Ducks couldn’t handle the Bruins. And that’s why it’s so hard to make any assumptions about UCLA.
Could the Bruins struggle on defense and lose on the first weekend of the NCAA tournament? Sure.
Could they rumble through the field with this breathtaking offense and America’s most exciting player, the hero named Lonzo Ball who hit a clutch 3-pointer late that only a man without a conscience could produce? Yep.
They proved that Thursday.
Either way, you’ll keep watching. You must.
No team in America is more intriguing.
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