Scouting report: Arizona Wildcats vs. UCLA Bruins

The Star's Bruce Pascoe previews game day essentials, from projected starting lineups to storylines and series history, ahead of the Arizona Wildcats' game against UCLA on Thursday.

Game info

What: Arizona (14-7, 8-7) at UCLA (14-5, 10-3)

Where: Pauley Pavilion, Los Angeles

When: 7 p.m.

TV: ESPN2

Radio: 1290-AM, 107.5-FM

Social media: @TheWildcaster on Twitter / TheWildcaster on Facebook

Pregame Wildcast Podcast: Apple / Spotify

Probable starters: Arizona

Probable starters: UCLA

How they match up

The last time: UCLA shot 49% from the field and took 32 free throws (making 27) en route to its fourth straight win over Arizona at McKale Center on Jan. 9. Tyger Campbell led the Bruins with 22 points while shooting 7 for 10 overall and making all eight free throws he took while James Akinjo had 25 points and eight assists for the Wildcats.

The last time at Pauley Pavilion: UA coach Sean Miller was ejected for getting two technical fouls for the first time in his career, while the Bruins took 22 more free throws than the Wildcats did in UCLA’s 69-64 win on Feb. 29, 2020. The Wildcats held a 62-58 lead until 2:12 remained but coughed up three turnovers in the final 1:49. Nico Mannion led UA with 19 points and six rebounds, but Josh Green did not make the trip because of a lower back strain.

Series history: UCLA has won the last four games in the series and six of the past eight, while the Wildcats haven’t won in Los Angeles since Allonzo Trier returned from a PED suspension to score 12 points in a 96-85 victory on Jan. 21, 2017. Arizona’s only two wins over UCLA since then have been at the 2017 and 2018 Pac-12 Tournaments at Las Vegas. UCLA leads the series 14-12 in the Miller era at UA and 61-45 overall.

What’s new with the Bruins: With three losses in their past five games – to Stanford, USC and Washington State — UCLA now trails the first-place Trojans by a game in the Pac-12 standings. The Bruins’ only lineup change since then has been inserting David Singleton at shooting guard and moving Johnny Juzang over from shooting guard to small forward.

Juzang wound up earning Pac-12 Player of the Week honors on Monday after scoring 25 at Washington State and 32 points at Washington. With UCLA winning just 64-61 at Washington, Juzang became UCLA’s first player since Reggie Miller in 1986-87 to have scored at least half of the Bruins’ total points. The Bruins have also started playing center Mac Etienne, who graduated high school early and enrolled in December but sat out nine games before getting on the floor. Since then he’s averaged 17.7 minutes, playing 28 on Feb. 6 at USC when both Jalen Hill (unspecified reasons) and Cody Riley (ankle) were out. Riley has played in the Bruins’ past two games but Hill remains out, so the Bruins are still vulnerable to foul trouble against a physical team such as Arizona.

Playing without standout Chris Smith since he tore an ACL on Dec. 31 at Utah, UCLA is undefeated in nine games at home this season but has yet to face USC, Oregon or the Arizona schools at Pauley Pavilion.

The Bruins’ defense has also improved, with UCLA keeping four of its past six opponents from reaching the 43% mark while Washington shot just 36.2%.

He said it

“We just can’t get spread out. It’s not just the player defending the ball. It’s our help defenders and UCLA has a very good way of keeping you engaged in screens. Next thing you know, they have a lot of space to drive. They always have four perimeter players on the court. So that also lends itself to more open space, but the more you worry about drives and their four perimeter players, (there’s also center) Cody Riley. He hasn’t been 100% recently, which I think has hurt them, but when he’s healthy, he is a monster down low. I don’t know Jalen Hill’s status, but the two of them — there’s a reason UCLA is really good and that combination at center has worked.

“I think Johnny Juzang’s emergence as a great scorer really presents a challenge. He is playing with more confidence. He’s more experienced. I think he’s really improved. He can really score, he scored (16 points) against us the first time. I think like his trajectory was starting around that period of time. That’s one thing and then, I think what sometimes gets lost in the shuffle with them is, they lost arguably the conference’s best player (Smith). When everybody predicted UCLA as our conference champion and you started to think about UCLA, the first name that you would think about is him. I think they’ve done a remarkable job of playing without him.” — UA coach Sean Miller

Key player (Arizona): James Akinjo

Akinjo may have had his best overall game against the Bruins last month when he scored 25 points with 8-for-16 shooting while hitting all five free throws he took. Motivation shouldn’t be a problem, either, after he struggled against Oregon and couldn’t initiate a game-winning play on the final possession.

Key player (UCLA): Tyger Campbell

Juzang might be the Bruins’ hottest player, but Campbell has made a habit of having a good time at the Wildcats’ expense. Before he had 22 points by mostly slicing up the Wildcats en route to the basket or free throw line last month, he had 12 points on 5-for-10 shooting as a freshman at McKale Center last season and had eight assists without a turnover while shooting just 1 for 11 at Pauley last season.

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Sidelines

What about the Ducks?

With its Jan. 16 game at Oregon still yet to be rescheduled and very much in doubt, Arizona may wind up ending its season at home on Feb. 27 against Washington. 

UA was asked to move up its planned regular-season finale against ASU on March 6 in order to keep the final week of the season open for makeup games, but Miller indicated the conference may be treading carefully now with the NCAA’s mandate that tournament teams must have seven consecutive days of negative tests.

Even though a potential UA-Oregon makeup game in Eugene would be played roughly two weeks before the start of the NCAA Tournament, the game may be viewed as not worth the risk.

“I think the conference is going to protect itself to get the most teams in postseason,” Miller said. “I don’t know the answer. Nobody has said ‘no,’ nobody has said ‘yes’ (about playing Oregon). 

But if I’m doing the math, I don’t know if that last week is as clear cut as maybe it once was … I don’t know where we stack up. If we’re needed, clearly we would love to play — but I don’t really have the answer to that.”

UCLA has an even tougher situation. The Bruins had two games against the Ducks that remain up in the air, and they have potential significance to the Pac-12 race.

UCLA coach Mick Cronin said he’s primarily concerned about his players’ mental health and academics, having stressed to UCLA chancellor Gene Block his concern that the players wanted a season and a chance at the NCAA Tournament, which COVID-19 took away from the Bruins after their late surge last season.

“So we’ve had our season, and we got a few games left,” Cronin said. “I don’t really care about anything but the things I promised Chancellor Block I cared about. I want the kids to have a season, have a chance for the tournament. How many games we play doesn’t matter to me.”

Lee returns

Miller said forward Ira Lee has returned to practice this week after missing the Oregon State and Oregon games last week with an ankle injury.

While Lee is averaging just 10.4 minutes per game in conference play, his return could help the Wildcats.

UCLA expected to again be without forward Jalen Hill, leaving the Bruins more vulnerable to foul trouble inside.

Lee played high school ball in Southern California — and, unless he opts to return because the NCAA is not counting this season on eligibility clocks, this might be his last trip back to face UCLA and USC.

“We’re deeper team with Ira,” Miller said. “We’re a more versatile team. The best thing he does is rebound. He gives you energy and … this is gonna be one of the last times that he has a chance to play in LA against these two teams so I’m glad we have him for sure." 

NCAA extends dead period

The NCAA extended the recruiting dead period again to May 31, meaning teams can’t visit recruits or host them in-person for what’s now been over a year.

Miller said the extended dead period shouldn’t affect his team much because he didn’t expect as much turnover as he has in recent springs (including the loss of his entire starting lineup in 2018 and 2020.)

UA could have its entire roster back, plus the three recruits it signed in the fall: Guards Shane Nowell, Shane Dezonie and K.J. Simpson.

Compounding the problem

It’s long been a nearly annual ritual for Pac-12 coaches to complain about the lack of respect their teams receive nationally, but Cronin says it’s worse this season.

Because of the pandemic, few teams wanted to make long trips out West to play Pac-12 schools, and some of them (such as Arizona) didn’t want to leave home themselves during nonconfernence play.

That left Pac-12 nonconference schedules consisting mostly of home games against mid- or low-major teams and a few, mostly unsuccessful, big road games that Pac-12 teams were willing to play.

UCLA lost to Ohio State in Cleveland. At a casino resort in Connecticut, USC lost to UConn and ASU lost to Villanova. Stanford lost to North Carolina in a  Maui Invitational game played at Asheville, North Carolina. Oregon lost to Missouri at Omaha. And Colorado lost a true road game at Tennessee.

“I would like to say what our record would have been if the Ohio State game was in California, if Southern Cal-UConn was in California instead of Connecticut, if Tennessee plays at Colorado, if North Carolina has to go to the Bay Area to play Stanford … and on and on,” Cronin says. “You just keep looking at it.

“So now our league is completely disrespected. God forbid USC loses — then we’re gonna be out of the top 25 whereas teams in other leagues, it’s like they just lose and it doesn’t matter. Everybody still thinks they’re really good.”

Cronin said it hurt that the Pac-12’s image was set by that nonconference schedule, meaning subsequent improvement within league play hasn’t been factored in.

“Our league is way better than people think,” he said. “I’m not saying we’re winning the national championship. There’s clearly two favorites. But there’s teams in fourth place or second place in our league, that are just as good as teams in second and fourth place in other leagues. But we’re not treated the same in national rankings.”

Numbers game

2.7

6.9

74.9

75.6