UCLA flexes its depth while dismantling Southern Utah

LOS ANGELES — Mick Cronin has a stockpile of lessons on the brim of his brain, just waiting to spill out. After Tuesday night’s lopsided victory over Southern Utah, the UCLA head coach said he took the time to lecture his team on finances and education rather than reflect on the outcome.

He doesn’t conjure these teachings out of thin air. Most have been passed along and he speaks fondly of those mentors who have guided him. Bob Huggins, whom Cronin shared a bench with when he was an assistant at Cincinnati in the 1990s, specifically, has received air time twice this season as UCLA’s defense has excelled.

Huggins, Cronin says, helped shape his defensive philosophy.

“We’d sit in my office at 10 o’clock at night figuring out points per possession,” Cronin said. “Turnover margin. … That’s just math. We get way more shots than you, we get way more possessions than you, we’re probably going to beat you.”

On Tuesday, UCLA forced 30 turnovers – the program’s most since Matt Barnes, Earl Watson and Jason Kapono and the 1999 Bruins forced 32 against Fairfield – and gave it up to Southern Utah just eight times. Not surprisingly, the Bruins shot 80 times and the Thunderbirds just 40. This theory, which Cronin emphasized as a foundational piece of his career, helped UCLA to an 88-43 win.

The Bruins dropped out of the AP Top 25 after losing the second game of their season to New Mexico, and have received just five votes to return since. That national metric, though, isn’t as important, nor as indicative to success, as turnover-margin, which translates to their defense ranking 10th in the country, according to KenPom.

While that ranking is partially exaggerated because of blowouts, in which the Bruins (6-1) prey on lowly mid-major teams, the Thunderbirds (6-2) aren’t that. They held double-digit leads in each of their previous two games (wins against UC San Diego and Idaho) and took Loyola Chicago (6-0) to the buzzer.

“I was a nervous wreck all weekend,” Cronin said after Tuesday’s game. “They just must have had no gas in the tank.”

That siphoning hose was the Bruins’ defense, which had a season-high 62 deflections, probably a record, according to Cronin.

The Bruins’ starting lineup struggled briefly before Lazar Stefanovic provided a jolt. He checked in at the 12:34 mark of the first half and missed his first shot before swishing the next five. He scored 13 points before halftime and continued that streak into the second half, hitting two more jump shots, before finishing off a fast-break with a rim-scraping dunk, which enlivened the Bruins’ bench.

The celebration, which continued into an ensuing timeout, displayed the type of teammate and leader Stefanovic is. Stefanovic’s praising and advising voice has been a constant at the Bruins’ practices. After starting all 33 games in 2023, he is willingly coming off the bench in his senior season. That selflessness reverberated unto him Tuesday as his teammates found him open time and again. He had a season-high 19 points, needing a total of five dribbles to convert those scoring opportunities.

Dylan Andrews, another returner who has seen his usage drop, enjoyed his most efficient offensive night. He got hot and scored nine of his 11 points in a short, 2:21 span early in the second half.

“Just taking what the defense is giving me,” Andrews said.

It might sound simple, but it’s a refreshing statement as 18 days ago, in a game against New Mexico (5-1) when Andrews was supposed to set an example for his teammates, he forced just about everything. He, Stefanovic and Cronin each claimed that the Bruins are a completely different team from the bunch who “weren’t ready as a group” to play in that 72-64 neutral-court loss, as Cronin put it on Tuesday.

“We have much better chemistry,” Andrews said.

“You never want to lose,” Stefanovic added, “but if you lose, you want it to happen early so you can figure some things out. It’s really not a bad thing if you want to learn from it.”

“I look in the mirror when stuff like that happens,” Cronin said when asked if the Bruins have grown since the loss to New Mexico. “We’re going to find out.”

Cronin is right, the Bruins’ upcoming five-game stretch, beginning Tuesday against Washington, will tell them all they need to know about how far they have come. If there’s any indication of growth, though, they can look at their steadily improving turnover margin, a stat Cronin has always felt directly correlates to winning.