To win title, UCLA has to clear huge hurdles
For UCLA, a murderers’ row of college basketball looms.
Chances are, to get to the national championship game, the third-seeded Bruins will have to beat not only No. 2 seed Kentucky but also No. 1 seed North Carolina and No. 1 seed Kansas.
After watching UCLA beat his team 79-67 Sunday night, Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin said he offered Bruins coach Steve Alford more than congratulations.
“I told him they got a chance to win the whole thing,” Cronin said. “I wished him luck.”
UCLA will need luck — if it hopes to survive the run of blue bloods that begins Friday in Memphis, where the Bruins play Kentucky in a rematch of their Dec. 3 game that UCLA won 9792 in Lexington, Ky. Then the road could get tougher.
The Bruins would face the winner of top-seeded North Carolina vs. fourth-seeded Butler.
And if UCLA beats that opponent, wins the South Region and reaches the Final Four, it would face the winner from the Midwest Regional, where Kansas is the top seed.
“I think we’re very well prepared for whatever is thrown at us, just because we’re 35 games in,” said Alford, whose team is 31-4. “Doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. It gets tougher each bracket that you get to.
“We know we got a tall order ahead of us. We also know we’re a very good basketball team.”
A very good but sometimes inconsistent basketball team. Sunday, against No. 6 seed Cincinnati, for example, the Bruins shot 37.5% from the floor in the first half and trailed 33-30.
Lonzo Ball, UCLA’s star point guard, had seven points and zero assists. By the end of the game, he had 18 points and nine assists and had fueled the Bruins with several big plays, including back-toback three-pointers.
“I don’t know of a more fun basketball team to watch when we’re clicking, and we’ve had a lot of games where we’ve been clicking,” Alford said. “Now we can go to a different level offensively, and you saw that in the second half.”
The question is, can UCLA do it against the likes of Kentucky, North Carolina and Kansas?