How did UCLA/PAC 12 fly under the radar?
I didn’t catch any regular season games, but the PAC 12’s performance was a shock to everyone in the tournament - capped off by and 11-seed UCLA taking “the best team in a generation” to the wire.
did anyone watch the conference this year? Were there signals that UCLA had the stones to make a run? It’s less scientific and more of a “hell of a story” that will make this tournament even more memorable.
UCLA is an example of a team that did not play well for much of the season and then hit its stride toward the end of the year/tournament time.
This isn't sour grapes - whether you believe that or not - but they're not that good of a team. Johnny Juzang is simply playing out of his mind right now.
Consider:
The last time Juzang hit 66.7% of his shots (tied for a season high) was in game one of this season when he went 4/6 against San Diego. Then he went out and hit 66.7% against the undefeated, #1 team in the country...but hit 12/18 this time.
His 57.9% shooting against Michigan would have been even better if not for rolling his ankle. He had only topped or matched that percentage 5 times all year...and then did it in two straight games, against Michigan and Gonzaga.
Other than his 32 points against Washington mid-season, his last two games (29 points vs. Gonzaga, 28 vs. Michigan) are his top two scoring games this year.
They were on a 4 game losing streak entering the tourney.
“Toward the end of the year”. Huh? UCLA lost 4 straight conference games immediately prior to NCAA tourney. They literally found themselves and began to hit their stride at halftime of the play in game vs Sparty
Michigan also lost 3 games at the end of the season. Yet they still had a top seed and were considered big favorites against UCLA.
We were 20-4 to their 17-9, so that's not exactly comparing apples to apples.
Also, even during our little slump (2-3) we beat MSU and Maryland by double digits. We never lost two consecutive games all season. UCLA lost four games in a row.
Juzang’s shooting was also more incredible with most of them well defended and many off-balance. The whole team made a lot of tough shots. It was ironic that Riley was burying 15’ shots but then missed a layup late in the game - it was too easy.
On top of the raw %, UCLA was 12/15 on shots of 15-20’9”. Those are shots that every D wants a team to take and UCLA was incredibly accurate.
UCLA was one of the very best midrange shooting teams all season.
Juzang, Jaquez and Campbell are all legitimately good midrange shooters. There was discussion about this before we played them. ("Normally we want to give up midrange, but they shoot well from there. What do we do?")
That said, their percentage against Gonzaga was unusually good even for them.
Give them all the credit - they are very skilled and got on a hot streak. Riley knocking down a handful of midrange jumpers just accentuated how well they shot.
Just a team that got hot. They actually mentioned last night that when they beat MSU they got a big big boost of confidence knowing they could beat “a great coach like Izzy.” True or not, it worked for them.
a team that did not play well for much of the season and then hit its stride toward the end of the year/tournament time.
It was more the other way around - UCLA was 17-5, then lost four straight to finish the regular season (and drop down to the play-in game).
So outside of a 2-week slump at the end of the regular season, the Bruins went 22-6. They were a good team that went through one rough patch and was overly penalized by the committee for that slump (and also because the Pac-12 was undervalued).
Yup. The Burke-led NC game team was also in a slump. Not that bad but still. Your last 10 game record before the tourney isn't a good predictor of how well you'll do.
Also, there were just far fewer data points with limited non-conference play. And one issue I've always had with conference strength in football or basketball is that teams develop over the course of a season, but non-conference games are almost all at the beginning. You could have a team start off poorly and then go on a tear in conference and that drags down the whole conference.
And sure Juzang is playing out of his mind, but he was 33 on the composite. Not like he's some try hard on a 15 seed and nobody wanted him.
"It's not who you play, it's when you play them." Or something like that.
---Jim Leyland
Johnny Juzang is simply playing out of his mind right now.
In a way, it's a bit like Michigan 1989 ... that was not a great team, but at the right time Glen Rice went insane and shot the lights out of the tournament.
'89 Michigan was absolutely stacked. A lot of guys on that team made the pros and Rice might be a Hall of Famer.
It had somewhat underperformed in the regular season, but still was 24-7 going into the tourney, coming out of a very strong Big Ten.
Made the same comparison BUT would disagree that team wasn’t great - M had lots of talent that year and chemistry. Loy Vaught, Terry Mills, Rumeal Robinson, Higgins, and Hughes were all pretty damn good. Then you throw in Rice averaging 31 points a game and they were lethal!
I agree with jmblue and gweb. Those guys played together pretty well and there was lots of next-level talent on the team. In addition to Rice, Terry Mills and Loy Vaught had long careers. Higgins was a reserve for several years. Rumeal played in the NBA for a bit. Even Demetrius Calip played for part of a season. They had a future NBA player (Riley) redshirting, too.
I italicized "great" to put emphasis on that word. Perhaps "all-time great" would have been better. I wasn't saying they weren't very good ... it's just in the rear view mirror, that 1989 team is not in many lists of great teams; some, but not many.
That takes nothing away from that team. In fact, given they won the championship with an interim coach -- and a fortuitous put-back by Sean Higgins to beat Illinois -- says something about their heart. I loved that team, but the run to the championship was a nail-biter (Illinois and Seton Hall). Had Glen Rice gone cold for even one game, it's unclear how they would have fared.
Eh, I think there are better examples - like Danny Manning putting Kansas on his back, Carmelo doing the same with Syracuse, etc.
Rice was out of this world that tourney but we had a lot of other really good players, too.
"but at the right time Glen Rice went insane and shot the lights out of the tournament."
Rice did indeed shoot the lights out—his six-game average of 30.6 pts per game for a total of 184 is still the tournament record—but that wasn't a radical divergence from his season performance.
In the '88-89 season, Rice hit 30 or more points in 8 games, and got 29 points in six other games. What made the difference in the tournament was his consistency. If we'd had a guy who was that consistent this tournament, we'd have made the FF at least.
2 things happened
1. Frieder got out of the fucking way
2. Glen Rice was given the shots he needed to win it for us
Sometimes basketball is that easy. Every coach that got Glen Rice a Jordan like number of shots got Jordan like results. It only happened for 1 NBA season and 6 games in college but it happened.
I think it’s a combination of late start times for the PAC-12, general EST media bias (hence the “last 10 champions were from EST” message that showed up multiple times) and the fact that Bill Walton is insufferable as a commentator.
The conference itself is much more athletic than it gets credit for, which also probably explains why Oregon and USC got as far as they did. While other conferences are more “physical”, they weren’t ready for the run-and-gun of Oregon or the ridiculous length of USC.
As for UCLA specifically, they’d lost their last 4 games coming into the tournament. They just found something with their control of tempo and Juzang making everything and it almost carried them to the title game.
Bzzz. Wrong.
Bill Walton is everything that is great...in an area we all take way to seriously (college sports) Bill Walton had emerged and is trying to humble us.
Bzzz. Wrong.
Walton is an awful commentator but would absolutely be an amazing person to have a conversation with.
Walton was an amazing basketball talent and should be celebrated for that.
He is also the biggest homer slappy of an announcer in history. Hearing him prattle on yesterday about the MOST PRESTIGOUS UNIVERSITY IN THE HISTORY OF THE COSMOS would have made Bob Ufer go, "eh, maybe tone it down a bit?"
This is a bad opinion and you should feel bad for expressing it.
I am 100% here for blaming Bill Walton
general EST media bias (hence the “last 10 champions were from EST” message that showed up multiple times)
That's a true statement. If I say the sky is blue, am I biased toward the color blue?
On the same vein, how was the big ten so freaking overrated?
Michigan was the only team reasonably expected to underperform their seed due to injuries but the opposite happened
Lack of top tier, stick it in your eye, talent. OSU probably could have competed along those lines if they'd had a decent big man.
Look at Gonzaga, Baylor, and UCLA -- they all got it. We will have it soon.
We won the Big Ten-ACC Challenge, which turned out to be fool's gold because the ACC sucked, but that wasn't clear at the time. It caused our conference to be overrated, especially since the non-conference schedule was so short. 80% of the regular season was played in conference so we just got a feedback loop from that and teams like PSU and Indiana were hanging out in the top 40 on Kenpom with losing records.
I never bought that OSU or Iowa were legit #2 seeds. They didn't play defense.
Purdue was a classic overachieving regular-season team that really wasn't that good.
Wisconsin, Maryland and Rutgers did their part in the tournament (although Rutgers blew a chance to make a huge statement).
Illinois was a legitimately strong team, but Porter Moser ran circles around Brad Underwood in the second round.
The Big Ten is overrated because of how the conference is ref'd during the regular season. In an era where freedom of motion is rewarded, the Big Ten refereeing culture still identifies with Tom Izzo's version of basketball.
Big Ten teams look like fish out of water when they get to the NCAA tournament and don't have Big Ten Refs officiating their game. I'm not speaking specifically to this year's tournament either. I'm speaking about the last 20 years.
A big reason JB's teams could finish middle of the pack in the conference and then make a NCAA tournament runs? That offense thrived on freedom of motion and the moment they got away from Big Ten Refs, it flourished.
I witnessed plenty of freedom of motion infractions that should have been called against UCLA in our tourney game with them. Not blaming that for the loss (we flat out stunk and Juzang's vision quest continued unabated), but go back and watch how UCLA mucked up basic screen actions by impeding the screener's intended destination. It's a great defensive coaching strategy if it's not being called.
Strange things can happen in single-elimination tournament games, involving kids playing in the late teens to early 20s, where momentum can swing wildly game to game and even within games, and where individual player performance and injuries have an amplified impact.
This. No Pac 12 team made it to the final game. One made it to the Final Four. In a single game tournament, anything can happen—like a Zion-led Duke flaming out early. Kentucky and Duke have had the most talented rosters for much of the last fifteen years. How many times did they lose earlier in the tourney than expected? In a one-game elimination scenario where every team is a very good team, the chances of losing are raised. Every team has flaws, and every team has a chance to play their worst game. Look how poorly Michigan played at Minnesota after thrashing them. Look at how Michigan picked FSU apart, but then couldn’t hit FTs in that game. The mistakes carried over from one game to the next, but the shooting wasn’t there. Why? March Madness
I'd buy that if one team made a run. The whole conference made a run. Literally every team well outperformed their seed and Oregon lost to USC. I don't buy that the tourney results this year were meaningless and we should put more stock in the abbreviated non-conference games from 4 months ago.
UCLA lost their last 4 games prior to the tournament, to Oregon, Oregon State, USC and Colorado. They were 18-10 entering the tournament, including a loss to Ohio State earlier in the season.
I don't think anyone could have predicted they would take the unbeaten, best-team-in-the-Kenpom-era Gonzaga Bulldogs down to the wire in the Final Four. UCLA seems to have found another gear when they needed it most.
UCLA looked phenomenal against Gonzaga, but if you had asked me after Tuesday, I would have said that Michigan probably beats them 7-8 out of 10 times. After last night, I'm not so sure.
Consider their four end of season losses. Those four turned out to be pretty good in tournament play. So it's not like they lost to bottom feeders (at the time) in the Pac 12. Those were four pretty hot teams.
At the very least their performance against Alabama and Gonzaga makes our loss slightly easier to swallow...
Re: Gonzaga being "the best team in the Kenpom era," the shortened season and lack of non-conference opportunities this year make it hard to compare with previous seasons. (Then with Gonzaga, you have the problem that they play no one from January to mid-March.)
One guy shoots 60% and 66% in consecutive Elite 8 and Final 4 tournament games. Tip your cap to him, but that is NOT a high probability event, even if he's Pistol Pete!
Oregon, Oregon State, USC and Colorado turned out to be really good teams, and 3 of them made deep runs in the tourney. The Pac12 was deeply underrated, as usual.
I assume you're including Oregon, but they went 1-1 in the tourney, same as Colorado. USC and Oregon State made deep runs. Oregon got a pass in the first round, but we don't know if they would've beaten VCU.
Stealth technology is really good now
Apparently Pac 12 teams started training much later in the year due to Covid restrictions. They started peaking at the right time because they were simply so rusty earlier in the season.
The really short and mostly regional pre-conference schedules led to some problems judging conference strength correctly.
This. The lack of a full non conference schedule made it more difficult than usual to compare different conferences. I'm always amused in the football season when people make assumptions on teams/conferences based solely (or almost solely) on conference performance. The lack of competitive, non conference games makes it really difficult.
I caught a few ASU games and wasn't particularly impressed.
Same goes for all the post season tournament selection committees.
I watched a few of their games during the regular season and absolutely was never once impressed. Simply put, they got hot in the 2nd half against MSU and rode that momentum right to the final 4 and almost pulled that off too
Eh. People here weren't impressed by Gonzaga until they beat USC and Michigan lost.