Aday Mara stars as UCLA holds off No. 18 Wisconsin
LOS ANGELES — Aday Mara’s relationship with the media and the UCLA men’s basketball fans has been that of a well-choreographed flamenco.
Seven feet and three inches of pure Spanish hype descended upon Westwood in the summer of 2023, but Mara struggled to adapt to the physicality of the college game throughout his freshman season.
So came an offseason of players and coaches imploring that he had added strength, deeming his foot injury a positive because it meant he could dedicate even more time to weightlifting. Then, there were the offseason practices featuring Mara on the sideline, visibly 20 pounds sturdier, as Bruins head coach Mick Cronin had said; and the early-season glimpses of dominance against low-major opponents and against his teammates in practice.
“I can’t tell you how many times I look at the stat sheet after practice and he’s 10 for 12,” Cronin said. “The time was going to come where he’s going to have that type of game.”
But he hadn’t.
In fact, it had gone the opposite direction. Mara played nine minutes against Michigan, three against Maryland, none against Iowa. Inevitably, when there are so many hypothetically positive sentiments surrounding a player’s potential but they don’t come to fruition and you never hear directly from the player, questions arise.
On Tuesday night, when his career-high 22 points helped the Bruins hold off No. 18 Wisconsin, 85-83, Mara finally answered all those questions. Loud and clear, for all of Westwood and Spain to hear.
“It feels good,” he said, speaking to reporters for the first time. “(Cronin) told me to be ready. I was ready – I was ready to finish.”
He finished with hook shots and dunks. He caught pocket passes, rewarding Cronin, who felt the Bruins (13-6 overall, 4-4 Big Ten) could exploit the Badgers (15-4, 5-3) with their size.
Wisconsin has long excelled in the Big Ten because of a slow-plodding attack, but UCLA rode that strategy to victory, snapping the Badgers’ seven-game winning streak. The Bruins flipped the script. They out Big Ten’d one of the conference’s perennially physical teams.
While the Badgers relied on their perimeter prowess, knocking down 15 3-pointers, the Bruins bludgeoned. They played through Mara, and junior Tyler Bilodeau, who added 16 points of his own.
The Bruins have toyed with their frontcourt rotation throughout this season, but as they meticulously orchestrated it during this recent homestand, it lifted them back into the conversation of Big Ten title contenders.
After a 12-point performance against Iowa on Friday, Cronin gave William Kyle III the first crack on Tuesday. He was slow to close out on a pair of 3-point shots, both of which went in, so Cronin turned to Mara.
He subbed in at the 7:47 mark and helped the Bruins answer an 8-0 Wisconsin run with five quick points. Toward the end of the first half, Cronin played Mara and Bilodeau alongside one another, which he’s rarely done this season. He must have seen something he liked in that brief stretch because he went back to it at the 17:27 mark of the second half.
With that two-big lineup on the court, the Bruins turned a three-point deficit into a 55-51 lead. Bilodeau had hit a pair of 3-pointers in the first half, which forced the Badgers to respect his shot and left the lane open for Mara.
“It opens up a lot of spacing for our team,” Bilodeau said about his minutes with Mara.
It opened driving gaps for Sebastian Mack, the Bruins’ 6-3 version of Popeye the sailor man, who plays just as formidable as his towering teammates.
On Tuesday, he bullied his way into the paint, putting a quiet first half behind him. He backed down Badgers guards Max Klesmit and John Blackwell from beyond the perimeter all the way into the paint. He scored 19 points, 15 in the second half. He bumped past Blackwell to earn a trip to the free-throw line to give the Bruins a two-point lead with 30 seconds left.
After Mack split his pair of free throws, Cronin subbed Kyle back in, to have five players on the court who could guard any position. It was his first time seeing the court since his flawed early stint, but Kyle rose up and blocked John Tonje’s potential game-tying jumper in the paint with nine seconds left.
“A credit to Aday Mara, who didn’t play in our last game,” Cronin said. “A credit to Sebastian, in the second half … and a credit to William Kyle, who didn’t play the whole second half, till he blocks a shot to win the game.
“I just talked to the guys about staying ready and having a great attitude.”
On a UCLA team that is legitimately nine or 10 players deep, sustaining that mindset was always going to be the challenge. Through the lineup experiments and inevitable Big Ten losses, would the players stay locked in, put their egos aside and maximize the depth?
It seems like they have. Mara and Kyle certainly have as Cronin has mixed and matched them throughout the season, until finding something that stuck.
“All of us came from places or been in places where we’ve lost,” Mack said. “We don’t want that feeling anymore, so we tried to pack in as a unit, regardless of the coaches, just talk amongst each other and then just figure it out.”
UCLA came together after a four-game losing streak and bounced back, earning its third win over teams ranked inside the AP Top 25 poll at the time of the game (Gonzaga and Oregon were the first two).
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UCLA plays at Washington on Friday at 8 p.m.