The UCLA men’s basketball team knows all about the unpredictability of this year’s college basketball season.
Just ask Monmouth, Washington or Washington State.
More often than not, the Bruins have found themselves at the center of the madness, creating national headlines in the process.
Just ask Kentucky, Gonzaga or Arizona.
Plenty has been written about the inconsistencies of this year’s Bruin squad and fans are – understandably – losing their minds over this maddening Jekyll-and-Hyde team, but the problem isn’t confined to Westwood. Every day brings a new set of upsets to the sport, a slew of favored schools getting dismantled across the nation.
When it comes to your March Madness bracket, you’d best get out your sharpest No. 2 pencil and keep an eraser handy because parity is going to be the true victor this year.
As the top teams fall, however, the resumes of mediocre teams – hello, UCLA – get boosted with impressive wins. But how much are those wins really worth anymore? A trio of major upsets in any other season would look a whole lot better, but in 2016 it’s no guarantee that that body of work constitutes a tournament-ready team.
Not only that, but those three takedowns are less and less impressive as the season continues – Kentucky’s fall from grace was particularly swift and stunning, from No. 1 to No. 20. But, regardless of what other teams do, UCLA continues to undermine itself with its own letdowns. Compound all that with the sport’s uncertainty and you have a recipe for trouble.
Now, this isn’t to say that the Bruins have no shot of playing in mid-March, but there’s an added pressure to do well in conference play. If UCLA (12-8, 3-4 Pac-12) is going to catch the eye of the selection committee, it will need to convince its critics in the final months of the season.
Ken Pomeroy’s 2016 College Basketball Ratings have the Bruins ranked No. 62 overall, and Joe Lunardi’s latest Bracketology projects the team to be in a first round play-in game, fighting for an 11-seed.
This is still a tournament team in the eyes of many of the top analysts, but Pac-12 play could easily break UCLA if the losing continues. A resurgence would put the Bruins comfortably into the 6- to 9-seed range since strong conference wins would become the narrative surrounding the team, but additional embarrassing losses may spell doom.
The outlook is cut and dry for UCLA, but the diagnosis for this team’s struggles is anything but.
There hasn’t been an obvious flaw to pinpoint as the reason for the Bruins’ losses so far. Sometimes they show up with energy, sometimes they don’t.
Maybe we’ll see the team storm through its final 11 regular season games before flying out to Las Vegas to stomp its opponents in the Pac-12 tourney.
Or maybe there’s more heartbreak ahead – another set of losses to the Washington schools, another disappointing finish against USC and an early exit in the conference tournament.
At this point, I would say to prepare emotionally to handle any possible scenario. But you’re a UCLA fan, you already knew that.
UCLA’s upset victories will be nice to have on its resume but they are far from enough. The Bruins need to send a message that they are serious contenders, not just yet another team that is enjoying its simple existence in the midst of chaos.
Email Walters at twalters@media.ucla.edu or tweet him at @tannerbwalters.