Here’s your weekly dive into what we took away from the last seven days of college hoops.
Week 11 of college basketball has come and gone and while there won’t be a new no. 1 team in the polls this week, there was still plenty of interesting action across the country. In Indiana, the Hoosiers are adjusting to life without sophomore OG Anunoby who has been ruled out for the season after suffering a knee injury. At Texas A&M, clock malfunctions produced a questionable ending for Georgia fans. In the Pac-12, Arizona’s Allonzo Trier made his debut on Saturday after finally having a performance-enhancing drug leave his system.
Here’s a look at what we learned from Trier and the Wildcats’ win over UCLA and more this past week.
1. A bad defense will make it tough for UCLA to win the title
With Lonzo Ball leading the UCLA Bruins’ potent offensive attack, it’s been easy to fit the team into the national title discussion, but Saturday’s 96-85 loss to the Arizona Wildcats emphasized the reasons you should be hesitant about picking the Bruins to win it all come March.
Against the Wildcats, UCLA gave up a blistering 1.32 points per possession. Arizona’s athletic guards were consistently able to get to their spots against the Bruins’ smaller and less athletic wings. Freshman Lauri Markkanen added 18 points on 6-for-10 shooting from the field as TJ Leaf struggled to contain a player with similar offensive strengths.
UCLA’s defensive woes aren’t limited to Saturday’s loss, though. The Bruins rank 125th out of 351 Division I teams in adjusted defensive efficiency, per KenPom. That metric measures how many points per 100 possessions a team gives up when corrected for strength of schedule. The problem? No team in the analytics era (since 2002) has won a national title with a defense that bad.
The above chart shows the 15 national champions dating back to 2001-02 as well as this season’s UCLA squad sorted by their pre-NCAA Tournament adjusted defensive efficiency ranking. The best model for the Bruins is arguably the 2009 North Carolina Tarheels, the worse defensive team to win a title in this era. The Tarheels, like this UCLA squad, ranked as the best offensive team in the country, but even their ranking suggests that teams have to play some defense to win a title.
Since beating the Kentucky Wildcats back in December, UCLA has been ranked a top five team in the polls. That ranking has been at odds with efficiency metrics that project the Bruins as more of a top 15 team. Saturday’s loss to Arizona provided some insight for why UCLA may have been a bit overrated and why it may struggle come March.